Load balancing, which helps speed up Internet traffic and automatic failure recovery features, is also included in the software. The software will support clusters of eight four-processor servers, scaling to 32 servers, Novell officials claim.
In order to provide scalability from commodity-class servers it is necessary to deploy a large number of nodes and to provide load balancing as well as failover. Automatic or manual failover is supported to cater for unplanned or planned downtime...
The latest version of the open source OS will be tailored to high-end computer systems and will include features such as clustering and load balancing. Red Hat will this week launch an advanced version of its Linux operating system.
Administrators can also configure clusters of servers without bringing the system down. Other reliability enhancements include the ability to isolate different application processes to prevent one crash from causing another.
In doing so, an F5 solution can be used for load balancing, inspecting the packets then distributing them across servers in an appropriate manner (the box can even take a feed from the servers, to support its decision making).
Car companies and drug companies are among the early users of such clusters, he said, noting that Microsoft has a cluster internally that its treasury uses to evaluate the company's vast investment portfolio.