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Flattening Out The Linux Cluster Learning Curve

Posted by michael on from the stomp-stomp dept.

editingwhiz writes "IT Manager's Journal has a good look at a forthcoming book, The Linux Enterprise Cluster, that explains in clear, concise language how to build a Linux enterprise cluster using open source tools. Writer Elizabeth Ferranini interviews author Karl Kopper in a Q&A. Is this more complicated than it appears to be? (IT Manager's Journal is part of OSTG.)"

3 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. The problem with clustering in Linux... by Xpilot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...is that there are a gazillion ways to do it, and every cluster vendor comes up with their own way, and there is no agreed-upon standard yet to easily deploy these things (AFAIK). Now the fact that there is no single vendor controlling how clustering works is a good thing, without a lack of a good standard as to what a clustered environment will offer to the application developer, the task of setting up clusters for different types of applications remains a tedious task.

    Lars Marowsky-Brée had a paper in the proceedings of OLS 2002 describing the problem and a suggeted solution in his paper entitled "The Open Clustering Framework". I'm not sure how far standardized clustering has come since then. Anyone has any insight on the matter?

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
    1. Re:The problem with clustering in Linux... by barks · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have yet to meet anyone that's running a homebrew cluster and tell me which distro they're running...as awesome as they appear to be.

      What I gathered from my introductory Operating Systems class was that this was the next frontier and exciting market to keep an eye for.......that and creating applications for these setups was not as you said, standarized yet. Can Linux applications that normally run a single box setup migrate relatively easily to a cluster setup yet?

      --

      Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
  2. VMS clusters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Want practice with decades-mature enterprise clusters? Why not get a few old VAX or Alpha systems on eBay, and/or fire up a few instances of the simh emulator, then join the free OpenVMS hobbyist program (I recommend the also-free-to-hobbyists Process Software's Multinet TCP/IP stack and server software).

    And please, don't be put off by VMS because DCL = your first exposure to a VMS system - feels more awkward than bash (in many ways, it certainly is!). It's in the underlying architecture of the OS where the fruits of tight engineering are really demonstrated.