Linux Clustering

[HTM~ZenEye]

Hey Raker,

How good is Linux's clustering abilities? Yea/Nea? How efficient is it? Worth the trouble as far as time + hassle vs. performance? What distro is best for it? Can you connect two machines via integrated gigabit nics? What are best practices?

Heres the hardware specs:

MSI K8N NEO 4-F mobo
Athlon 64 4000+ @ 2.4ghz
1 GB DDR400 super talent memory
nvidia 8600gt 256mb
audigy sound card
250 GB Hitachi deskstar HD

Any input would be great, thanks

[HTM|Assraker]

It is very effective for many things, but you must customize the kernel generally. I would not recommend it for the novice tbh. If you can code, go for it.

[HTM~ZenEye]

ok no clustering then lol. 2 64 bit servers it is

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

What services were you hoping to cluster? MySQL?

[HTM~ZenEye]

no it would be for a gaming cafe so actually i was just hoping to combine the computing power of two machines, then run various dedicated servers on the boxes. So i guess that would be more like an array than a cluster, you know for load balancing and performance. two physical boxes seen as one logical, can linux do that?

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

Yea I'm sure it can but the application would have to be able to take advantage of it. So the games would have to be tolerant of load balancing.

What I mean to say is you would have a virtual IP that everyone would login to from their client, but you would need to have a UT2004 server (for example) running on each server.

They would some how need to be in sync for what MAP and even down to the seconds tic of the game clock, otherwise players connected to one node would be like lagging behind players in the other node.

I could do some research but since the games aren't made to run in a load balanced config it's probably not worth it. Now if you could make a VM (virtual machine) that pools the resources of both servers but runs in one VM that would be sweet.

[HTM~ZenEye]

yes i was thinking of running VMware, so the all os would have see is the two machines as one, then run virtual machines on top of linux to allocate system resources(i.e. memory) for each virtual server accordingly.

Scenario:

Host OS: 2 processors and x amount of ram

Virtual server: two processors and y amount of ram with individual Vip for each server. could allocate only enuff mem as needed. would take some major baselining tho.

I'm just thinking out loud here, looking for a way to maximize performance with existing hardware without spending any money.