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High Availability Clustering

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the for-those-of-you-with-extra-hardware dept.

Christopher Cashell writes "Everyone knows about Beowulf High Performance clusters, but it's often remarked that these are impracticle for most business uses, and that High Availability Clustering is still lacking. It looks like the guys at TurboLinux are working on fixing that. First seen on freshmeat"

12 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re:GPL versus $1,000? by Justin+Cave · · Score: 2

    Most of the customers for high-availability clusters are corporations who use them in mission-critical systems. To them $1k/node is nothing.

    As with all GPL'd software, you pay money for the intangibles-- tech support, documentation, and, in this case, value-added tools. When nodes running your stock market go down, you want to be able to pick up the phone 24x7 and get help real fast.

  2. Re:MOSIX by Christopher+Cashell · · Score: 2

    MOSIX has actually been posted to slashdot before, and was the subject of a rather intense discussion.

    They're project is a kernel module that requires kernel modifications, however, according to Linus's decision, this means they have to release the whole thing under the GPL if they decide to distribute the module. Last I heard, they hadn't decided what they were going to do about that, yet, as they wanted (needed?) to distrbitute it as binary only.

    --
    Topher
  3. GPL versus $1,000? by Seth+Cohn · · Score: 2
    1.1 What is the price of the system?

    The price is not set. However, it is anticipated to be around $1,000 dollars per node.

    1.6 What license will the software use?

    The kernel patch will be released under GPL with full source code. TurboLinux has not announced licensing for the monitoring and configuration portions of the cluster system.


    ok, GPLed!... And at $1000 a node, someone will write a GPLed monitor and config portion real quick to match it.

    Wondering why they are charging so much....

    --
    Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
    1. Re:GPL versus $1,000? by TurboJustin · · Score: 5

      As the other reply says, our main target is going to be business customers. If you can grab the kernel patch, recompile your kernel, etc.. you don't buy commercial software.. you probably also work for a company that pays you enough that maybe the time it takes you to do that costs more than the software :) The point is that our software is commercially developed and supported, we make it easier to manage and easier to implement, and take care of some of the work that would cost our customers time and money on our end..

      As far as a GPLed monitor and config, it isn't just a 'monitor and config', it is a cluster daemon that does load balancing and offers up faul-tolerance, etc.. Let's also pay attention to 'TurboLinux has not announced Licensing for the monitoring and configuration portions', this means we are looking at different licensing models, it doesn't mean we are definitely going to close the source.. stay tuned for our decision, we aren't out to chet the Linux world, we just want people to buy our stuff.

      FYI part of the config is opensourced, the module to TurboNetCfg that sets up the cluster webserver is open-sourced (the beta download is approx 120k I think, it has the kernel patch, tlcusteradm, tlcusterd, and the module for NetCfg, check it out)

      Free Software is a great thing, but so is paying the bills, it can be hard to find a balance. This is not a product that would sell in the numbers that the others will, and it requires *much* more development work than the core distribution, so it is more costly.

      If you have suggestions on any of our products, comments, etc.. let me know, my e-mail is justin@turbolinux.com, I'm a Developer Relations Associate with PHT and beleive me, we really do care :)

      Later,

      Justin

  4. Other HA by Alan+Cox · · Score: 2

    Yesterday btw there was an eddieware press release
    that their open source web stuff will be doing a
    real live test for the next cricket series.

    Well cool

  5. Open Source VS Project by philz · · Score: 2

    There is some really good stuff on Virt Servers at http://proxy.iinchina.net/~wensong/ippfvs/ . I belive that the pacific tech distribution was a fork off of this project.

  6. High Avaiability by Pila · · Score: 2

    I'm a bit confused. OK there are many Web server very important but high avaiabilty is not only for Web.
    In the industry HA is more important for DBA, TP monitor and application server than Web? Doesn't it?

    --
    ---Pila---
  7. Re:Linux high availability by craigoda · · Score: 3
    Hi, the monitor and config tools were developed completely seperate of any other project. Although the kernel patch by Wensong eventually came to be used in modified form in our product, it is being replaced in future versions. We tried to give Wensong appropriate credit on our main web site http://www.turbolinux.com. The credits to Wensong were there from the time we announced the product and we have a good relationship with Wensong.

    I've linked this site to our community home page.

    The statement that it is simply repackaged is incorrect. As the development continues, we'll always release the source for the kernel routing features and hopefully help the progress of the free software projects.

  8. Yeah, but read the license! by Howard+Roark · · Score: 3

    Pacific HiTech is putting this out as closed source. Pretty neat. The community does all the testing and they get to keep all the source. Not very friendly.

    My computer, my way. Linux
    --
    Howard Roark, Architect

    --
    Howard Roark, Architect
    I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
  9. Linux high availability by Alan+Cox · · Score: 3

    There are a whole pile of solutions see

    http://www.henge.com/~alanr/ha/

    I guess thats a very underpublished URL 8(

  10. MOSIX by michael · · Score: 4

    Well, everybody's talking about Beowulf, about High Availability. But nobody dares to talk about MOSIX, a Linux Kernel Module developed at an Israel University. It supports things like application-transparent adaptive load balancing, memory ushering and things like that. The only problem: not free up to now. But, wait! They are currently looking for a sponsor for maintainance and further development. This sponsor(s) may also choose the license, too. Check this one: MOSIX Homepage. Tried to post it to slashdot wo times before, but they didn't seem to like it ... :(

  11. Eddieware does more.. by liquidsky · · Score: 4
    Turbolinux only does local area clusters; and they use a very ugly, non portable, kernel patching solution.

    Eddieware does DNS load balancing (and hence isn't bottlenecked like the Linux Virtual Server Project), LAN load balancing, IP migration and admission control. In addition to linux 2.0.x and 2.2.x it works under FreeBSD and Solaris. Checkout http://www.eddieware.org .

    Checkout the Eddieware press release at www.eddieware.org/txt/press990503.html . Funny how this didn't get a mention in the main slashdot articles but a closed source solution does!