Error: “Satellite … does not support the following layers: [DRBD]” when creating VM on LINSTOR storage in Proxmox

LINBIT SDS Integrations Proxmox VE
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1

Hey everyone,
I installed LINSTOR on a three-node Proxmox cluster. All nodes are identical, each with the same type of NVMe drives and connected via 25 Gb mesh network. I followed the official guide here:
https://linbit.com/blog/setting-up-highly-available-storage-for-proxmox-using-linstor-the-linbit-gui/ LINBIT

The LINSTOR storage appears correctly in the Proxmox cluster storage view, and everything seems configured. However, whenever I try to create a disk or place a VM on the LINSTOR/DRBD storage, it always fails with this error:

NOTICE
  Trying to create diskful resource (pm-fc65982b) on (PXNode03).
  Diskfull assignment on PXNode03 failed, let's autoplace it.
TASK ERROR: unable to create VM 106 - API Return-Code: 500. Message: Could not autoplace resource pm-fc65982b, because: [{"ret_code":-4611686018407201828,"message":"Satellite 'PXNode01.home.local' does not support the following layers: [DRBD]","details":"Auto-placing resource: pm-fc65982b","error_report_ids":["694705D2-00000-000013"],"obj_refs":{"RscDfn":"pm-fc65982b"},"created_at":"2025-12-21T07:42:23.046887639+01:00"}] …

It looks like Proxmox isn’t able to place the DRBD resource because one of the satellites claims it “does not support the DRBD layer.” I have verified that DRBD-9 is installed and modinfo drbd shows version 9.x on all nodes. forums.linbit.com

Is this a hostname mismatch issue or something else? Has anyone seen this specific error when using LINSTOR + Proxmox?

Thanks in advance!

2

I have seen this error before on a node where the DRBD 9 kernel module was loaded but the node was missing the drbd-utils package.

From notes when this happened to me a couple years ago, I restarted and verified that LINSTOR services (controller and satellite) were enabled in my cluster to get things working. However, this might be a “hard” touch I later learned from a colleague. After confirming that the DRBD 9 kmod is loaded and the drbd-utils package is installed on the node, it might be enough to simply reconnect the errant node:

linstor node reconnect <node_name>
3

Hey, thanks a lot! But it’s very strange because I installed the nodes fresh and I always get the same error on every node — for example on Node2 and Node3 as well.

Is the guide up to date for proxmox 9.1?

4

The blog article you linked, and its companion article mention Proxmox 8… I can run through them again in the coming days w/ Proxmox 9 and verify whether there have been any changes requiring additional or altered steps.

In the meantime, when you’re able to, let us know if verifying that the DRBD 9 kmod is loaded and the drbd-utils package is installed, and then reconnecting the node was enough to get you past the error.

5

Hey Thx a lot,

So its installed on all Nodes got this message.

root@PXNode03:~# dpkg -l | grep drbd-utils
ii drbd-utils 9.33.0-1 amd64 RAID 1 over TCP/IP for Linux (user utilities)

6

I was finally able to run through the " Setting Up Highly Available Storage for Proxmox Using LINSTOR & the LINBIT GUI" instructions in a Proxmox VE 9.1.4 environment.

The only difference I noted was that the instructions in the article did not mention loading the DRBD kernel module after installing the necessary packages. This step is mentioned in the companion article that does not use the LINBIT GUI.

apt install -y proxmox-default-headers drbd-dkms drbd-utils && \
  modprobe drbd && \
  modinfo drbd | grep ^version

You can verify the DRBD kmod is loaded w/ an lsmod |grep drbd command and that it’s v9 (necessary for LINSTOR) by entering a cat /proc/drbd command.