Steffan Davies wrote:
Jarkko Hietaniemi <j...@iki.fi> wrote at 08:06 on 2008-03-25:
Indeed. I've seen UNIX servers with 1+ year uptime, but sooner or later
either a disk crash or a need to patch something urgent brings them down
either by accident or by necessity. VMS takes uptime rather seriously.
(I don't know for certain but I assume that one can patch a cluster one
node at a time so that the services of the cluster remain available.)
Same applies to a cluster of any OS, surely? (With dishonourable exceptions
for such things as Exchange in which clustering seems to consist of a set
of mechanisms by which the failure of a single machine can bring about the
demise of its peers).
S
Certain other kernel-patch-based clustering mechanisms can fail messily
in a heterogeneous cluster. Particularly when the clustering patch
itself is updated, but also when the kernel in general changes.
I'm thinking of a Linux one I've worked with in the past which was
extremely fragile, but can't quite remember its name... it was a while
ago, and an experience I've mostly tried to forget.
