March 2007
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
11h 12m
English
Content preview from Linux System Administration
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
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Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
Load-Balanced Clusters
More than 10 years ago, people discovered they could connect multiple cheap
machines to perform computing tasks that would normally require a mainframe or
supercomputer. NASA’s Beowulf cluster was an early example that is still in use
today (http://www.beowulf.org). A Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Computer_cluster) lays out the chief characteristics of a cluster succinctly:
A computer cluster is a group of loosely coupled computers that work together closely
so that in many respects they can be viewed as though they are a single computer.
Clusters are commonly, but not always, connected through fast local area networks.
Clusters are usually deployed to improve speed and/or reliability over that provided by
a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single comput-
ers of comparable speed or reliability.
Clusters are a good solution when you’re looking to improve speed, reliability, and
scalability for a reasonable price. Amazon, Yahoo!, and Google have built their busi-
nesses on thousands of commodity servers in redundant cluster configurations. It’s
cheaper and easier to scale out (horizontally, by just adding more servers) than it is to
scale up (vertically, to more expensive machines). There are many Linux cluster solu-
tions, both open source and commercial. In this chapter we’ll discuss clusters based ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.