Clustering options

[Matt Olander]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2004 at 05:20:30PM -0800, Justin Hopper wrote:
> Interesting.  So most blade servers allow for each node in the cluster
> to run as it's own system, for example as a webserver, right?

Yes. The blades are all independent systems that share common
redundant infrastructure, such as switch, powersupply, etc. 

> Is there no appliance that allows for the details of the hardware to be
> hidden from the OS and instead present to the OS a unified architecture,
> like it's just one machine, but with the ability to add more nodes to
> expand CPU, RAM, and disk?  I guess this was my misunderstanding, as
> this is what I assumed the blade systems did.  I assume it would be
> incredibly tricky to manage dynamically configurable hardware in the
> operating system, but I also assumed that somebody had pulled it off,
> but maybe not?

Sure. You can buy a Sun Micro Fire 12k 36-way for about 1.3 million ;)
An x86 based blade system combined with some opensource fail-over
software will definitely do what you need though, and is quite a bit
easier on the wallet!

Regards,
-matt

> -- 
> Justin Hopper  <jhopper at bsdhosting.net>
> UNIX Systems Engineer
> BSDHosting.net
> Hosting Division of Digital Oasys Inc.
> http://www.bsdhosting.net

-- 
Matt Olander
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www.offmyserver.com
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