Application Workload Management (page 2 of 2)

This is a perfect place for true N-to-N clustering. N-to-N refers to multiple Service Groups (application groups) running on multiple servers, with each Service Group capable of being failed over to different servers in the cluster. For example, imagine a 4-node cluster, with each node supporting 3 critical database instances.

On failure of any node, each of the three instances is started on a different node, ensuring no node gets overloaded. This is a logical evolution of N + 1, where there is not a need for a "standby system" but rather "standby capacity" in the cluster.

Traditional N-to-N clustering required that each server had enough "standby capacity" to be able to run any of the applications in the cluster. This takes the IT manager back to the same issue that they had before they started Hardware Consolidation - under utilization of hardware resources.

What is required to truly utilize the capabilities of N-to-N clustering is an advanced ability to proactively determine the absolute best node to run an application at time of failure and scalability to handle this decision for unlimited groups simultaneously.

VERITAS Cluster Server provides a unique new feature called Service Group Workload Management to address these issues

Service Group Workload Management (SGWM) is an advanced capability in VCS to proactively determine the best possible system to host an application during start up or following an application or server fault.

At the highest level, SGWM provides necessary tools to make intelligent decisions on start up or failover location based on system capacity and finite resource availability.

At it's most granular level it is capable of proactively managing a cluster consisting of tens or hundreds of application groups by integrating with third party performance measuring tools.

VERITAS Cluster Servers SGWM enables IT Manager to take full advantage of the pendulum swinging back to a (consolidated) centralised computing model and still have the benefits of using Open System Hardware and out of the box software.

VERITAS Cluster server gives the IT managers the application availability that the users are demanding as well as centralized management that IT Manager need. With the SGWM feature in VERITAS Cluster Server IT Manager can be sure that in the event of a failure the applications, VCS will be able to proactively determine on which of the surviving nodes the applications need to start, so the users will not be affect by any performance degradation after a failure to a server in the cluster.