| Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10: User Guide | ||
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This chapter will introduce you to the Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 product. We will examine what the product is and how you can use it effectively to enhance the performance and reliability of your network and the services it provides.
We will introduce you to the product, describing what it does and who the target audience is. Next we'll explain the benefits of using Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 as compared to stand-alone systems and other clustering products. Finally, we'll review the software and hardware requirements for running Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10.
Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 is an enterprise-class solution that allows you to leverage your existing network resources to create scalable and reliable services. With it, you can significantly improve quality-of-service levels for virtually every TCP/IP network service, including web, email, news, and FTP. Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 provides the architectural framework that will allow your network to effortlessly grow to meet new demands.
Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 implements load balancing and fail-over support of network services. Load balancing allows the services to run on multiple systems. The cluster will distribute client connections among the servers that make up the cluster. Fail-over allows the service to run on a single server. If that server should fail, another server within the cluster will take over for it.
You can think of Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 as similar to RAID. Whereas RAID uses an array of disks, Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 uses an array of servers. Both provide the same features: enhanced speed, reliability, redundancy, and scalability. Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 distributes the workload among several servers instead of concentrating all the work on one large server. However, the cluster will appear as a single machine to clients accessing it.
Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 is targeted at medium to large companies who want to implement the high availability or scalability features at a modest price. Internet Service Providers will find the product useful to provide a higher level of uptime as well as scalability that allows them to add servers to the cluster to improve performance. Large enterprises can use the product to deliver standards-compliant services to large numbers of clients, either internally or on the Internet. Medium-sized companies can use the software to leverage existing computer systems as the company's needs grow.
An administrator implementing Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 should be familiar with Linux or UNIX and have a good understanding of TCP/IP networking. While clustering is a fairly simple concept, the implementation details can be rather complex. Troubleshooting any problems that arise will require not only understanding of the concepts behind TCP/IP, but also experience with the real-world problems that can arise.
Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 is not a Beowulf cluster, and is not intended to compete with Beowulf. It is not used to cluster CPU-bound processes, but instead focuses on network-based services.
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