From the course: Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) Cert Prep

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Use network block devices: NBD

Use network block devices: NBD

- [Instructor] In this lesson we'll explore how to mount block devices from remote servers. Now, in previous lessons, we learned about special files that can reference our storage devices. For example, /dev/sda or /dev/vda points to our entire first storage device on the system. And /dev/sda1 or /dev/vda1 points to the first partition on the first disk. These are block special files that reference block devices. Network block devices do a similar thing, but instead of pointing to storage devices plugged into our system, they point to a storage device on an entirely different computer. For example, imagine this setup. We have one server with two storage devices referenced by the /dev/vda and/ dev/vdb block special files. Then we have another server with two storage devices referenced by similar files. With network block devices, we can essentially add a third disk to our first server. NBD utilities create a special file called /dev/nbd0. As far as applications are concerned, /dev/nbd0…

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