Question : How does clustering work?

How does clustering work?

Answer : How does clustering work?

Caudax,

The term clustering means many different things. In some implementations (Microsoft) the term is used to refer to a standby takeover capability. In OpenVMS (VAX/ALPHA/Itanium), clustering means all of the processors are running simultaneously, sharing a common file system, with locking down to a record level (up to approximately 100 nodes, it is quite impressive watching an OpenVMS cluster fly through a workload; see http://www.openvms.compaq.com for some more details).

What happens in OpenVMS clusters (and other clusters, just to a much lesser degree), is that the operating system images running in the different CPUs communicate with each other to manage resources. In less embracive cluster technologies, this coordination is at the level of controlling which system is the primary and therefore has control of the storage, network addresses, etc.

I hope that the above is helpful.

- Bob (aka RLGSC)