“The Santa Cruz Operation is introducing a version of Non Stop
Clusters for Intel boxes that doesn’t need Compaq’s proprietary
ServerNet interconnects. … SCO does recommend that larger
configurations than two nodes ought to use ServerNet switches. …
By the end of the year UnixWare NSC will support up to 16 nodes
(128 CPUs) and Gigabit Ethernet.”
“Despite some slips in its roadmap, UnixWare remains way ahead
of other Intel clusters. Microsoft looks like leaving Wolfpack, aka
Microsoft Cluster Server, where it is on the mortuary slab, and
joining Sun in an SMP scaling race. Windows 2000 DataCenter Edition
will scale to two or four nodes. This isn’t the heady stuff it was
promising four or five years ago. What’s worse is that Oracle has
no intention of producing a cluster-aware database for Windows
2000, and Microsoft’s own applications are only just getting round
to be cluster aware, and only in parts.”
“Open source Linux clustering for real database and TP jobs
abounds, with SGI and SuSE co-ordinating work on porting SGI’s
FailSafe to Linux. And work on a shared-everything, VAX-like
distributed lock manager should bear fruit towards the end of the
year. This will eventually be the lynchpin for cluster file
systems, unless FailSafe – which is also based on a DLM – hasn’t
scooped up the mindshare by then.”