LINBIT DRBD vs Obstor

LINBIT DRBD is open-source distributed replicated block storage software for Linux, used in high-availability setups. Its kernel driver mirrors writes to one or more peer nodes; in synchronous mode, a write completes only after local and peer storage completion events. Reads can be served locally without network traffic, and the data path avoids user-space components. DRBD combines the kernel driver with user-space management applications and shell scripts, and its command-line interface can manage large clusters without relying on cloud, virtualization, or container platforms. It supports TCP/IP and RDMA/Verbs transports, including InfiniBand, iWARP, and RoCE. The DRBD 9 guide documents TLS encryption for TCP transport. LINBIT also offers WinDRBD for Windows and says its subscriptions integrate with Kubernetes and other major platforms. The open-source community version is free; LINBIT Starter is $1,000 a year, starting from $1,000 for two nodes. The company is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

Obstor is an Apache 2.0-licensed, S3-compatible object storage server with built-in SFTP support. It works with S3 SDKs, command-line tools, and applications without code changes. In distributed deployments, objects are sharded and replicated across connected nodes, with each object kept in at least two global locations. Its native SFTP server stores uploaded files as S3 objects. Data features include SSE-C and SSE-S3 server-side encryption with KMS integration, configurable erasure coding for drive and node failures, and object versioning with lifecycle policies. IAM controls use users, groups, policies, and service accounts with S3 and AWS IAM policy syntax. Event notifications can be sent to Kafka, NATS, AMQP, Redis, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and webhooks. Installation options include a single binary, Docker, a Kubernetes Helm chart, or building from source. Standalone instructions cover macOS, GNU/Linux, and 64-bit Windows. Standalone servers are intended for development and evaluation; versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deployment with erasure coding.