[CentOS] does anyone have experience with clusters?

[Rudi Ahlers]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Tom Brown <tom at ng23.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thank you for the input. Let's forget about XEN for a moment, I was
>> actually looking at setting up a cluster which has fail-over & load
>> balancing capabilities, regardless of what runs on it. If XEN
>> enterprise is the only option,then I'm not going to bother. I don't
>> see why I need to pay for a tool which has a helpdesk and
>> "professional technicians standing by" to help me when I get stuck, if
>> XEN can do the same.
>>
>
>
> i cant speak for others but when i talk of clusters and load balancing i
> talk of different things. For load balancing i'd lean towards LVS and
> for clusters then it very much depends on what you are clustering.
> Application servers, databases, mail servers etc etc. For a MySQL
> 'cluster' i'd probably go for master<>master depending on how many nodes
> i need and the application type etc. If its application clusters then
> things like tomcat can know about each other and take over if one of
> them dies. I think that the point i'm trying to make is that the
> solution very much depends on what you are trying to achieve, so to me
> 'regardless what runs on it' is not really something to aim a good
> answer at.
>
> As mentioned i am pretty sure that if you want to make your own 'cloud'
> in todays speak then you may well be looking commercial.
>
> Thats just my thoughts and its most probable i am wrong.
> _______________________________________________



Hi Tom,

I do use MySQL clusters, but this is an application level cluster, and
is limited. I would like to go further and do an OS level cluster.
With DRBD, one could mirror 2 servers identical, i.e. everything on 1
server to the other, which is even better than MySQL clustering. But,
DRBD only offers high-availability, i.e. if one server goes down, the
other can take over.

What I'm looking for, is how to build what is called a super computer.
Google used to, or still even does this, where they put hundreds of
computers into the same "cluster" / super computer, and end up with a
1 huge hard drive, and plenty of RAM to use :) So, my question is, how
does one do this? I know that I can pay someone a LOT of money for it,
but I don't have a lot of money for this. If it's not possible, I'll
probably just go and purchase VMWare's grid application and use that,
but I would prefer to try this myself if possible.

-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers