Structure of a Clustered System

Clustered systems are similar to parallel systems as they both have multiple CPUs. However a major difference is that clustered systems are created by two or more individual computer systems merged together. Basically, they have independent computer systems with a common storage and the systems work together.

Clustered System Structure

The structure of a clustered system is given as follows −

Some details about the above structure are −

• The clustered system contains tightly couples individual nodes. However, the degree of coupling in the system may vary. Some jobs may require constant communication between the nodes while there are also jobs that may only need one or two nodes and almost no communication between them.
• The nodes in the clustered systems are connected to the storage area networks. Storage Area Networks are typically used to provide access to data storage. These make sure that storage devices such as disks, tape drives etc. can be accessed by the clustered operating system as system storage devices.
• All the clustered computer nodes share data and are linked together closely using local area networks (LAN).

Benefits of Clustered Systems

The difference benefits of clustered systems are as follows −

• Performance

  Clustered systems result in high performance as they contain two or more individual computer systems merged together. These work as a parallel unit and result in much better performance for the system.

• Fault Tolerance

  Clustered systems are quite fault tolerant and the loss of one node does not result in the loss of the system. They may even contain one or more nodes in hot standby mode which allows them to take the place of failed nodes.

• Scalability

  Clustered systems are quite scalable as it is easy to add a new node to the system. There is no need to take the entire cluster down to add a new node.