Linux Enterprise Cluster Terminology


Now that I've introduced the terminology used to describe high availability, I'd like to introduce a few terms that allow us to describe a GNU/Linux Enterprise Cluster.

In a cluster, all computers (called nodes) offer the same services. The cluster load balancer intercepts all incoming requests for services.[2] It then distributes the requests across all of the cluster nodes as evenly as possible. A high-availability cluster is able to failover the cluster load balancing resource from one computer to another.

This book describes how to build a high-availability, load-balancing cluster using the GNU/Linux operating system and several free software packages. All of the recipes in this book describe how to build configurations that have been used by the author in production. (Some projects and recipes considered for use in this book did not make it into the final version because they proved too unreliable or too immature for use in production.)

[2]To be technically correct here, I need to point out that you can build a cluster without one machine acting as a load balancer for the cluster—see http://www.vitaesoft.com for one method of accomplishing this.



The Linux Enterprise Cluster. Build a Highly Available Cluster with Commodity Hardware and Free Software
Linux Enterprise Cluster: Build a Highly Available Cluster with Commodity Hardware and Free Software
ISBN: 1593270364
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 219
Authors: Karl Kopper

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