A wave of Linux clustered machines has been anticipated since 1994, when the Goddard Space Flight Center produced the first Beowulf cluster. But only recently have the tools become available for the Linux cluster to become a more manageable engine on the Internet.
Clusters are multiple computers connected by a high-speed, local area network.
If one computer or node of a cluster fails, other nodes of the cluster will pick up its work. The technology is seen as an inexpensive way to ensure 24 by 7 operations, although cluster software is required and one unit of the node must act as referee. Today, Linux clusters are functioning as high-availability Web servers, domain name servers and mail servers running standard, nonparallel applications. Linux clusters are tackling large problems in unraveling the human genome, meteorology and pharmacology. One cluster, Computational Plant, or CPlant, at Sandia National Laboratories, is a 580-processor cluster that ranks 62nd on the Top 500 Supercomputing Sites list presented by the University of Mannheim and the University of Tennessee.