By Linda Leung, VNU Net
Red Hat has launched a version of the Linux operating system for
use in clustered server environments.
Red Hat High Availability Server 1.0 lets users cluster
individual servers so that if one server fails, another will
automatically take over its workload. This provides a high
availability server environment, suitable for web servers, ftp
servers, mail gateways, firewalls and VPN gateways.
The product also supports heterogeneous network environments
allowing each node within the cluster to run Red Hat Linux or
third-party operating systems including Sun Solaris and Microsoft
Windows NT. It is available online and from resellers priced
at $1995.
Paul McNamara, vice president of products and platforms at Red
Hat, said the product is an extension of technology already
available in Red Hat Linux 6.2.
“Clustering is a maturing of the technology. We had the
technology before in Red Hat Linux 6.2 but it was intended for
early adopters. We’ve now unbundled the clustering aspect and added
easy installation and more security to make it a commercial
product,” said McNamara.
As part of the security features, users can set up so-called
sand traps that redirect IP traffic from potential attackers to a
secure address. Multiple traffic routing and scheduling techniques,
along with virtual IP addresses, help to create a security barrier,
according to the company.
Red Hat said the Server could be configured in two ways: as a
two node cold failover cluster ideally suited for applications
where simple, affordable redundancy is needed such as firewalls,
static web servers, DNS and mail servers, or as Linux Virtual
Server mode, where a two node load balancer accepts requests and
directs those requests to one of any number of IP-based servers
using a configurable traffic management algorithm.