Re: High Availability
Hi Camm,
While MOSIX does provide some of the required single system image support
required for such applications, there seem to be alternatives. There are
some light kernel patches, such as bproc, etc. that give a global PID space.
There are also some distributed shared memory implementations, DSM is I can
recall at the moment. I think you might want to check them from
www.beowulf-underground.org . Anyhow, there is no complete solution to these
matters as Red Hat claims :) That is, you might get some HA features with
this stuff, but you'd be miles off without, say, a decent DFS. To be
certain, only some of them could be realized, because Linux is *not* a
distributed operating system.
See,
> It lets users combine individual servers into a
> cluster, resulting in highly available access to critical network
resources
> such as data, applications,
> network services, and more.
You just implement some location transparency for some of the services in a
system, and call it a HA server. I guess that's pretty doable.
I'd strongly argue that the only real new thing that can be offered would be
web servers with a parallel I/O back-end; which my advisor asked me to
implement. But I'm not doing that :-) Personally, I wouldn't think that you
can just apply the MOSIX kernel patches, install apache, and get the
ultimate scalable web server. It just won't work that way.
----- Original Message -----
From: Camm Maguire <camm@enhanced.com>
To: <debian-beowulf@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2000 9:37 PM
Subject: High Availability
>
>
> Greetings! While I know that HA clusters aren't really beowulf
> machines, what would it take to implement something like the below in
> Debian? Is mosix really the only missing piece?
>
>
============================================================================
=
> Business/Technology Editors
>
> RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2000--Red Hat,
> Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT), a leader in open source Internet infrastructure
> solutions, today announced the Red Hat(TM) High Availability Server 1.0, a
> specialized version of the award-winning Red Hat L
> Red Hat High Availability Server is an out-of-the-box clustering
> solution that delivers dynamic load balancing, improved fault tolerance
and
> scalability of TCP/IP
> based applications. It lets users combine individual servers into a
> cluster, resulting in highly available access to critical network
resources
> such as data, applications,
> network services, and more. If one server in the cluster fails, another
> will automatically take over its workload. The Red Hat
> to Web servers, ftp servers, mail gateways, firewalls, VPN gateways and
> other front-end IP-based applications where virtually uninterrupted
service
> is required.
> "The Red Hat High Availability Server is optimized specifically for
> Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and corporate customers who want to
> dramatically reduce
> the time needed for implementation," said Paul McNamara, vice president,
> products and platforms, Red Hat, Inc. "In today's demanding Internet
> environment, server
> failure means lost revenue and diminished customer satisfaction. With this
> product, we are providing customers with a flexible, affordable, and
highly
> available
> front-end Internet infrastructure solution. Because the Red Hat High
> Availability Server software can be installed on any off-the-shelf
> commodity hardware that
> supports Linux--it offers service providers and corporate IT departments
an
> option for increased availability at a significant overall cost savings."
> The product supports heterogeneous network environments, allowing
> individual members of the cluster to run Red Hat Linux or virtually any
> other OS including
> Solaris(R), and Windows NT(R). Because the Red Hat High Availability
Server
> is an open source product, customers are free from expensive technology
> lock-in
> that often occurs with proprietary solutions.
>
> New Security Features
>
> The Red Hat High Availability Server has a number of inherent security
> features designed specifically for high availability Web front-end
> applications. Remote
> system access is disabled by default, and unused network services are not
> installed or started in the standard installation.
> The Red Hat High Availability Server can be configured in two main
> ways. In Failover Services (FOS) mode, the system can be configured as a
> two node cold
> failover cluster ideally suited for applications where simple, affordable
> redundancy is needed such as firewalls, static Web servers, DNS, and mail
> servers. In Linux
> Virtual Server (LVS) mode, the system can be configured as an n-node
> cluster consisting of a two node load balancer, which accepts requests and
> directs those
> request to one of any number of IP-based servers based on a configurable
> traffic management algorithm.
>
> Red Hat High Availability Server 1.0 Features and Benefits
>
> -- Easy Installation: The Red Hat High Availability Server is based on
> the award winning Red Hat Linux OS. Red Hat's engineers have created a
> special
> installation-class that installs only those packages that are needed with
> the clustering packages. The Red Hat High Availability Server is installed
> for optimal
> performance--saving time and hassle.
>
> -- Higher Performance and Scalability: The Red Hat High Availability
> Server supports the scalability that meets the growth demands of today's
> highly dynamic IP
> environments. The number of cluster nodes is limited only by the hardware
> and network used. The product has advanced cluster features that provide
> high levels of
> performance including an ability to configure servers to bypass the load
> balancers when returning traffic back to the client, increasing the
overall
> performance of the
> cluster. Additionally, because individual nodes can be taken off-line
>
============================================================================
=
>
>
> Take care,
>
> --
> Camm Maguire camm@enhanced.com
> ==========================================================================
> "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
>
>
> --
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