On-line device verification enables users to do a block-by-block data integrity check between nodes in a very efficient manner.
Note that efficient refers to efficient use of network bandwidth here, and to the fact that verification does not break redundancy in any way. On-line verification is still a resource-intensive operation, with a noticeable impact on CPU utilization and load average.
It works by one node (the verification source) sequentially calculating a cryptographic digest of every block stored on the lower-level storage device of a particular resource. DRBD then transmits that digest to the peer node (the verification target), where it is checked against a digest of the local copy of the affected block. If the digests do not match, the block is marked out-of-sync and may later be synchronized. Because DRBD transmits just the digests, not the full blocks, on-line verification uses network bandwidth very efficiently.
The process is termed on-line verification because it does not require that the DRBD resource being verified is unused at the time of verification. Thus, though it does carry a slight performance penalty while it is running, on-line verification does not cause service interruption or system down time — neither during the verification run nor during subsequent synchronization.
It is a common use case to have on-line verification managed by the local cron daemon, running it, for example, once a week or once a month. See Section 6.9, “Using on-line device verification” for information on how to enable, invoke, and automate on-line verification.