x
Home
Search
Topics
Almanac
Science
Nature
People
History
Society
Signup
Login
HOME
TOPICS
ALMANAC
SCIENCE
NATURE
PEOPLE
HISTORY
SOCIETY
PHILOSOPHY
Sun Cluster
Topic Home
Discussion
0
Encyclopedia
Solaris Cluster is a high-availability cluster
High-availability cluster
High-availability clusters are groups of computers that support server applications that can be reliably utilized with a minimum of down-time. They operate by harnessing redundant computers in groups or clusters that provide continued service when system components fail...

 software product for the Solaris Operating System
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....

, created by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

, a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

. It is used to improve the availability of software services such as databases, file sharing on a network, electronic commerce
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online...

 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. Nodes may be located in the same data center
Data center
A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems...

 or on different continents.

Background

Solaris Cluster provides services that remain available even when individual nodes or components of the cluster fail. Solaris Cluster provides two types of HA services: failover services and scalable services.

To eliminate single points of failure, a Solaris Cluster configuration has redundant components, including multiple network connections and data storage which is multiply connected via a storage area network
Storage area network
A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...

. Clustering software such as Solaris Cluster is a key component in a Business Continuity
Business continuity
Business continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions. These activities include many daily chores such as project management,...

 solution, and the Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition was created specifically to address that requirement.

Solaris 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.

In June 2007, Sun released the source code to Solaris Cluster via the OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...

 HA Clusters community.

Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition

SCGE is a management framework that was introduced in August 2005. It enables two Solaris Cluster installations to be managed as a unit, in conjunction with one or more Data replication products, to provide Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity...

 for a computer installation. By ensuring that data updates are continuously replicated to a remote site in near-real time, that site can rapidly take over the provision of a service in the event that the entire primary site is lost as a result of a disaster, either natural or man-made. This is a key to minimizing the Recovery point objective
Recovery point objective
-Recovery point objective :When computers used for normal "production" business services are affected by a "Major Incident" that cannot be fixed quickly, then the Information Technology Service Continuity Plan is performed, by the ITSC recovery team...

 (RPO) and Recovery time objective
Recovery Time Objective
The recovery time objective is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in business continuity....

 (RTO) for the service.

SCGE today supports replication with Sun StorageTek AVS, EMC SRDF
SRDF
SRDF is a family of EMC products that facilitates the data replication from one Symmetrix storage array to another through a Storage Area Network or IP network....

 and Hitachi TrueCopy
Hitachi TrueCopy
Hitachi TrueCopy, formerly known as Hitachi Open Remote Copy or Hitachi Remote Copy or Hitachi Asynchronous Remote Copy , is a remote mirroring feature from Hitachi storage arrays available for both open systems and IBM z/OS...

. Support for application-based replication with both Oracle Data Guard
Oracle Data Guard
The software which Oracle Corporation markets as Oracle Data Guard forms an extension to the Oracle RDBMS. It aids in establishing and maintaining secondary "standby databases" as alternative/supplementary repositories to production "primary databases"....

 and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

 is planned for early 2009.

Proxy file system

PxFS (Proxy file system) is a distributed, high availability
High availability
High availability is a system design approach and associated service implementation that ensures a prearranged level of operational performance will be met during a contractual measurement period....

, POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

 compliant filesystem internal to Solaris Cluster nodes. Global devices in Sun Cluster are made possible by PxFS.

Supported applications

Solaris Cluster uses software components called agents which monitor an application to detect whether it is operating correctly, and take action if a problem is detected. Agents for common applications are included such as Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems
Siebel CRM Systems, Inc. was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management applications. The company was founded by Thomas Siebel in 1993. At first known mainly for its sales force automation products, the company...

, SAP Livecache, WebLogic Server
Oracle Weblogic Server
Owned by Oracle Corporation, Oracle WebLogic consists of a Java EE platform product-family that includes:* a Java EE application server, WebLogic Application Server* an enterprise portal, WebLogic Portal* an Enterprise Application Integration platform...

, Sun Java Application Server, MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

, Oracle RAC
Oracle RAC
In database computing, Oracle Real Application Clusters — an option for the Oracle Database software produced by Oracle Corporation and introduced in 2001 with Oracle9i — provides software for clustering and high availability in Oracle database environments...

, Oracle E-Business Suite and Samba
Samba (software)
Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...

 among others; there is also a wizard
Wizard (software)
A software wizard or setup assistant is a user interface type that presents a user with a sequence of dialog boxes that lead the user through a series of well-defined steps. Tasks that are complex, infrequently performed, or unfamiliar may be easier to perform using a wizard...

 which allows the cluster implementer to create agents for other applications.

See also

  • Computer cluster
  • SunPlex Manager, GUI used to view the status and administer some aspects of Solaris Cluster

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
Silverdale Interactive © 2024. All Rights Reserved.
 
x
OK