In Conclusion

As with monolithic server administration, cluster administration is more of an art than a science, requiring an in-depth knowledge of the environment where the cluster will be deployed. Each of the cluster administration design and implementation decisions will impact the reliability and availability of the cluster, so precautions should be taken to avoid single points of failure even when single points of administrative control are required. In this chapter, we have examined a few of the common system administration tasks and seen case studies that describe how these administration tasks translate into a cluster environment.