For whatever reason lately I’ve become sensitive to getting clusters to be considered “Enterprise-ready.” I’ve been talking to various people who either have clusters that are managed outside the mainstream Enterprise or who are new to clusters and want to find a way to get the clusters into the IT shop (so they don’t have to manage them). But a common theme from both sides is that Cluster Tools are missing what be termed “Enterprise Class” tools.
So how do we make existing Cluster tools into Enterprise-Class Cluster Tools? One approach is to add the pieces that are missing. I think there are some pieces that can easily be added to existing tools or just better installation and management tools to make them more Enterprise ready. However, I think there are some tools that need to be developed. Regardless let’s look at some things that are needed to move Cluster Tools into the Enterprise realm.
Bare Metal Backup
One of the key components that the Enterprise IT groups require in servers is a bare metal backup. This can be thought of a Disaster Recovery (DR) requirement. The idea is that if the server goes down and either a new OS drive is required or a complete new server is required, you can quickly restore it to the originally configured state without having to work through the installation, configuration, etc. that you originally had to do. It’s fairly easy to see the usefulness of…
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