Cluster Manager

A Cluster Manager is a software for the management of a computer cluster ( composite of several computers ). He represents management operations in the cluster and mostly automated operations such as the failover from the primary system to the standby system in case of failure and switchover for maintenance purposes. Synonymous with the term Clusterware is in use.

For the detection of a failure of a computer in the cluster usually called the cluster heartbeat is used in conjunction with or in addition to a quorum, a signal that is exchanged over a network connection between the cluster nodes ( individual computers in the cluster ). Muted the heartbeat of a computer, a failure is assumed thereof, and a failover initiated ( an acquisition of services such as databases, web server or application server ).

Some Cluster Manager provide the opportunity to develop their own agents. This version covers the case from that a computer is indeed available and its cluster heartbeat is further sent over the cluster network, however, the application service ( for example, a database service ) is no longer available. How to check if a database connection is possible a Cluster Agent. If this is not successful, a failover can also be initiated by the agent.

Typical Cluster Manager are

  • Sun Cluster for Solaris
  • Veritas Cluster Server for different operating systems such as AIX, HP- UX, Linux, Solaris and Windows
  • MC / Serviceguard for HP- UX
  • PowerHA for AIX (formerly HACMP )
  • SteelEye LifeKeeper for Linux
  • Heartbeat for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris
  • Oracle Cluster Ready Services for Linux and Windows since version 10.2 also to hedge non- Oracle services
  • Tivoli System Automation for z / OS, AIX, Linux, Windows Server 2003
  • Pacemaker scalable High-Availability cluster resource manager for Linux, formerly part of Heartbeat
  • OSL Storage Cluster for Solaris
Quorum (distributed computing) IBM AIX IBM High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing Linux-HA z/OS Pacemaker (software) Beowulf (Cluster) Oracle RAC Clustered file system
194652
de