Technical data

1
Introduction
This chapter introduces the TruCluster Server product and some basic
cluster hardware configuration concepts.
The chapter discusses the following topics:
• An overview of the TruCluster Server product (Section 1.1)
• TruCluster Server memory requirements (Section 1.2)
• TruCluster Server minimum disk requirements (Section 1.3)
• A description of a generic two-node cluster with the minimum disk
layout (Section 1.4)
• How to grow a cluster to a no-single-point-of-failure (NSPOF) cluster
(Section 1.5)
• An overview of eight-member clusters (Section 1.6)
• An overview of setting up the TruCluster Server hardware configuration
(Section 1.7)
Subsequent chapters describe how to set up and maintain TruCluster Server
hardware configurations. See the TruCluster Server Cluster Installation
manual for information about software installation; see the Cluster
Administration manual for detailed information about setting up member
systems; see the Cluster Highly Available Applications manual for detailed
information about setting up highly available applications.
1.1 The TruCluster Server Product
TruCluster Server extends single-system management capabilities to
clusters. It provides a clusterwide namespace for files and directories,
including a single root file system that all cluster members share. It also
offers a cluster alias for the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) so that a cluster
appears as a single system to its network clients.
TruCluster Server preserves the availability and performance features found
in the earlier TruCluster products:
• Like the TruCluster Available Server Software and TruCluster
Production Server products, TruCluster Server lets you deploy highly
available applications that have no embedded knowledge that they are
Introduction 1–1