[Linux-cluster] Linux Virtual Server Vs RedHat Cluster

[Mohd Irwan Jamaluddin]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 14:08 +0530, Manilal K M wrote:
> Hello all,
>    I am a beginner in the world of cluster and high availability. I
> have two mid-range servers (DELL) intended for web hosting. Each has
> it's own disk storage of some TB each. I don't have any shared storage
> for both of these servers. Both the servers are loaded with FC-4.
> Currently one of the server is active(other one is not functional).
> Now I need to cluster both these machines , so that I can make the
> servers high available and high performance. But still the priority is
> for High-Availability. I have tested different cluster suites
> including redhat clusters. But I'm confused in benchmarking these
> software.
> Yesterday I came across Linux Virtual Server. I have read the
> documents at  http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-cs-en/pt-lvs.html.
> Now I'm confused more ..
> I'll be greatly obliged if someone can help in making a decision
> between redhat cluster suite and linux virtual server. If somebody
> have experience in both these kindly provide a comparative study
> including their pros & cons.
> Applications that are intended to be deployed are:
> apache, openldap, mysql, postgresql, asterisk, openvpn.

You're so confused, young padawan.

Red Hat Cluster Suite (RHCS) consists of 2 main features that are High-
Availability & Load-Balancing. The High-Availability feature (always
referred as Red Hat Cluster Manager) comes from Kimberlite (originally
from Mission Critical Linux, Inc.) project while Load-Balancing feature
(always referred as Piranha) comes from Linux Virtual Server (LVS)
project.

High-Availability feature in RHCS:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-cs-en/pt-
clumanager.html

Load-Balancing feature in RHCS:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-cs-en/pt-lvs.html

If you want a so-called pure High-Availability feature, LVS seems not
for you. You may love this project: http://www.linux-ha.org/ . If you
require commercial-based application + commercial support, don't
hesitate to use Red Hat Cluster Manager.

-- 
Regards,

Mohd Irwan Jamaluddin
System Engineer,
Magnifix Sdn. Bhd. [http://www.magnifix.com.my/]
Tel: +603 42705073
Fax: +603 42701960