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Linux Clustering Cabal project

Posted by Roblimo on from the no-it's-not-beowulf dept.

RayChuang turned us on to this ZDnet story about the Linux Clustering Cabal project, which, Ray says, is "...the one that will allow Linux server clustering of many server machines. Sounds like just the thing to finally get eBay working reliabily and also make John C. Dvorak eat his words about the deficiencies of Linux."

2 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. *cough* Clustering 'new'? by Signal+11 · · Score: 5
    Umm, not to burst anybody's bubble.. but decentralized computing has been the paradigm for IT for a long time - put your web server on one box, your DNS on another, your mail server on a third (Multiply the number by 4 if you are running NT...), etc.

    Clustering isn't ground-breaking technology.. it's been around for a long time. Now, the concept of parallel processing has been around for a long time too... and it doesn't seem like many manufacturers are rushing to get their products working on beowulf clusters.

    This isn't to say it isn't a great idea - it's just that there isn't any support for it. There's plenty of alternatives too. For example:

    Webservers: Set up several servers, and an SQL backend (or an NFS mounted partition) to hold the content. For added speed, throw squid over that setup. You can even tell remote caches to access your servers round-robin style by putting in multiple 'A' records.

    DNS/mail: Heh. Even the IETF got this one right by suggesting primary and secondary DNS.

    Filesharing: There is some work being done to create a 'real' beowulf cluster to create something of a decentralized logical file server. For now, use AFS or CODA.. which have all kinds of cool performance benefits. As an aside - both are a helluva lot more stable than the Nightmare File System (NFS).

    Printing: They have affordable net appliances to do this (HP print server anyone?), and even some printers support direct access. Failing that, setting up multiple servers for multiple printers works pretty well - This is decentralized by design anyway...

    So there you have it... all the staples of the corporate network - "clusterized". New technology? I don't think so. All the examples I gave you are in wide use (and have been for some time!).

    --

  2. But how does it work? by Matt+Welsh · · Score: 5
    I would love to see a whitepaper on this. I have spoken a couple of times with Stephen Tweedie about his ideas, and he certainly has a lot of experience (he worked on VMS clusters for a while). However there are many smart people all over the world working on this same set of problems -- Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Compaq, etc. all spring to mind. A large number of university research projects are working on things that most commercial vendors aren't even thinking of yet -- my own research project at Berkeley being one of them.

    For those who want some background on the important issues, I highly recommend Gregory Pfister's book In Search of Clusters . Clustering is a lot harder than most people realize, and people should not ignore the work that's been done before in this area. The important question for LCC is what is fundamentally new in their design. I doubt that the lack of kernel locks is really it.

    The thing that remains to be seen is what set of applications they target, and what tradeoffs they make to support those applications. The fundamental issues in clustering have been addressed by a large number of research projects and products, and I'd like to know what's new about LCC.

    That being said, I'm happy that some smart people are going after this problem!