2.5. Cluster Management

Managing a cluster is a bit more complicated than just managing all the systems in the cluster. You must maintain each server as well as the system as a whole. Cluster management concentrates mainly on the cluster manager. That's where all the interesting functionality is implemented.

Cluster management primarily involves monitoring the performance of the cluster. You need to monitor each system as well as the whole cluster. If an individual system is overloaded, you can adjust the cluster configuration so that it doles out less work to that system; or there may be some configuration issue with that particular server. You should also monitor the performance of the cluster as a whole. If all the cluster nodes are heavily loaded, you may want to add an additional node or two to scale up the performance.

Another important aspect of managing a cluster is making sure all the systems are running the same software and using the same content. Turbolinux Cluster LoadBalancer 10 comes with some synchronization tools to help you replicate content, so that all the servers are consistent.