Internet Week: A Single Image For Linux

“A small company called Linux Networx has developed software
that creates single-system-image clusters of multiple Linux
systems, which could make the platform more suitable for database
apps. With a single system image, all of the servers on a network
look and function like one computer.”

“Single-system-image clustering is more robust than other kinds
of clustering technology available: failover clustering, where if
one server fails, another server in the cluster can take over its
workload; load balancing, where multiple servers balance the
workload; and message passing, which includes the Beowulf
technology for Linux. Beowulf is an open source effort that allows
multiple systems to perform parallel processing on the same task.
But that sort of clustering is suited to scientific and technical
applications rather than commercial and Internet computing.”

“The Linux Networx software is based on standard, open source
technology called BPROC, which allows servers to spawn programs or
processes on other servers. The software clones a master server’s
software onto multiple servers, to help users quickly set up
clusters of large numbers of machines.”

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