Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 16 Dec 1999 16:46:07 +0100
From:      Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai@bart.nl>
Cc:        cluster@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Project homepage and definitions
Message-ID:  <19991216164607.H62815@bitbox.follo.net>
In-Reply-To: <19991216155348.C68446@lucifer.bart.nl>; from asmodai@bart.nl on Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 03:53:48PM %2B0100
References:  <19991216155348.C68446@lucifer.bart.nl>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 03:53:48PM +0100, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven wrote:
> Added a few more references. (still sifting through Eivind's list.)
> 
> I am also in the prospect in writing a text on what exactly high
> availability and clustering is.
> 
> basically, at least what I know is that:
> 
> high availability is a more sophisticated form of load balancing

High Availability is used somewhat fuzzily, but represent 'Making a
system be available more of the time than usual'.  This might be 24/7
(e.g. web servers), or it might be *always* during the 8/5 working
hours, with "anything goes" during the rest of the time (e.g, stock
exchange systems).

One common definition of a High Availabilable System is 'Anything
without any SPOF (Single Point Of Failure)', differing from 'Classic
Fault Tolerant' (which is defined as the usual tell-me-tree-times or
similar hardware level fault tolerance).

> clustering is basically the grouping of stations and the sharing of
> processes between those stations.  Also parallization plays an important
> aspect.

Clustering is also fuzzy, but do not need to include process migration
(and actually usually does not).  The definition I find myself most
comfortable with is 'Any set of computers with an SSI (Single System
Image) seen from some point of view'.

Eivind.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-cluster" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19991216164607.H62815>