Even a few minutes of network downtime can cost thousands of dollars in revenue, damage public faith and sap productivity. To help avoid downtime, businesses are turning to clustering technology to keep networks running without disruption. However, clustering today is often a hodgepodge, reactive technology created solely to reduce server downtime, so greater availability through clustering comes at a price. Because clustering techniques are layered on top of the server operating system, they are hard to manage and do not automatically share resources between nodes, a feature that would enhance the cluster's performance. Next-generation clustering products will help eliminate this complexity by integrating clustering into the operating system and making a complex pool of clustered components as efficient and easy to manage as a single system.
Any application can access any file on any node of the cluster.
Even if an application is moved from one node to another, no change is required for it to access files across the system. In addition to global file access, next-generation clustering environments also make all devices accessible and visible throughout the cluster. From this emerges highly available global device access. As with the other components of the architecture, the network presents a single-system view to applications and users. In a clustered environment, it is essential that applications and users can treat the cluster as a single entity and that it is referred to as a single logical host name and global IP address.