Sun Cluster

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Sun Cluster (sometimes SunCluster) is a high-availability cluster software product for the Solaris Operating System, created by Sun Microsystems. It is used to improve the availability of software services such as databases, file sharing on a network, electronic commerce websites, or other applications. Sun Cluster operates by having redundant computers or nodes where one or more computers continue to provide service if another fails.

High availability (HA) clusters are distinct from parallel computing clusters (those designed to operate with many systems simultaneously working on portions of the same task). HA clusters are used to provide services that remain available even when individual systems or other components of the cluster fail. Sun Cluster provides two types of HA services: failover services and scalable services.

Sun Cluster implementations attempt to build redundancy into a cluster to eliminate single points of failure, including multiple network connections and data storage which is multiply connected via storage area networks.

Similar products include Linux-HA, Veritas Cluster Server, and IBM HACMP.

Sun Cluster is an example of kernel-level clustering software. Some of the processes it runs are normal system processes on the systems it operates on, but it does have some special access to operating system or kernel functions in the host systems.

[edit] See also

Computer cluster

[edit] External links

[edit] References

Greg Pfister: In Search of Clusters, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-899709-8
Evan Marcus, Hal Stern: Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-35601-8
Joseph Bianco, Peter Lees, Kevin Rabito: Sun Cluster 3 Programming: Integrating Applications into the SunPlex Environment, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-047975-6
Richard Elling, Tim Read: Designing Enterprise Solutions with Sun Cluster 3.0, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-008458-1
Kristien Hens, Michael Loebmann: Creating Highly Available Database Solutions: Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Sun Cluster 3.x Software, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-186390-8