Data Center High Availability Clusters

High Availability Clusters Overview

Clusters define a collection of servers that operate as if they were a single ma
chine. The primary purpose
of high availability (HA) clusters is to provide uninterrupted access to data, e
ven if a server loses
network or storage connectivity, or fails completely, or if the application runn
ing on the server fails.
HA clusters are mainly used for e-mail and database servers, and for file sharin
g. In their most basic
implementation, HA clusters consist of two server machines (referred to as nodes)
that share
common storage. Data is saved to this storage, and if one node cannot provide ac
cess to it, the other node
can take client requests. Figure 1-1shows a typical two node HA cluster with the
servers connected to
a shared storage (a disk array). During normal operation, only one server is pro
cessing client requests
and has access to the storage; this may vary with different vendors, depending o
n the implementation of
clustering.
HA clusters can be deployed in a server farm in a single physical facility, in d
ifferent facilities at various
distances for added resiliency. The latter type of cluster is often referred to
as a geocluster.