Re: Clustering on Linux Was: "Re: New dad (again).."

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:15:18 +0100 (BST)


> A friend of mine working for Microsoft is asking me (and I quote):
>
> || BTW: does Linux know about clusters? As far as I know, no.
> || NT5 knows already and this makes it less prone to attacks..
>
> Which proves that indeed what they understand by "clustering". But what
> really is clustering, and does linux support it?

I'm confused. Clustering has no security value since each node implicitly
has the same bugs. In act it decreases security as there are additional
communications between nodes and more code executed.

Furthermore when you hit bugs terrible things occur. A program hits an OS
bug and totals a machine. It fails over onto the next node which then
crashees etc..

Clustering means anything from

Lots of boxes wired together as a giant compute surface [Beowulf]

through

Lots of boxes wired together and if one fails the proceses on it are
restarted from last saved checkpoint but on a new CPU [linux checkpoint patch]

through

Any node can crash at any time, any piece of hardware can be swapped live,
we drop anvils on running nodes to prove this. Our algorithms protect
from things like propogating kernel bugs [Tandem]

Alan

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