OS Clustering

In the recent past there has been many implementations of successful cluster operating systems as a result of several research projects and R&D done for commercial purposes. GL unix are such examples. Clusters are increasingly becoming the solution for many sequential and parallel applications and nowadays it is widely used in server configurations.

The primary purpose of OS clustering which also known as aka hardware clustering, is to manage hardware and OS-level failures. What happens is it automatically stats up a backup server in the os-cluster when the primary server fails in such a way that any external person using the services would notice no difference accessing the services provided. It generally involves in re-assigning the failed server IP-address to the backup (IP-takeover), re-permissioning file system access with the backup if a shared file system is being used, and then running own script written to bootup the applications required for service offering.

OS-Clustering have the following advantages

• If you have a bunch of applications which must run on the same machine, OS clustering can ensure that all these must run on the primary node in the cluster
• If your applications are dependant on "local file system" like databases need to manage their files locally - the os cluster can ensure that this file system fails over with the primary node of the cluster
• If you dont have a NAS or a file server, and you need a shared file store, you can create a share file store on the OS cluster for use by machines outside the cluster. Of course if you have a file server or are storing information in a database, then its not valid