High Performance computing or cluster computing is a type of computing wherein a bunch of computers, also called nodes, connected through LAN act like one machine.
You can use cluster computing to solve complex operations efficiently with a faster processing speed and better data integrity compared to a single computer.
The popular implementations of cluster computing include
- Earthquake simulation
- Google search engine
- Weather forecasting system
- Petroleum reservoir simulation
What Impressed on the Significance of Cluster Computing?
The computing features were good enough to solve simplistic concerns. However, there were issues when it came up to synchronisation of current technologies and advancements. Low performance, reliability and pricing concerns were some of the many problems faced.
To cope with this, the IT departments introduced cluster computing, capacitated to solve limitations of one system.
The many advantages of this approach made it popular across several organisations and they started implementing this technology in several activities.
Cluster Computing Features
- All connected computers use similar machines
- The machines remain connected through a dedicated network connection
- All computers share common home directory
Cluster Computing Types
Applications anticipating high-availability without downtime reduction use cluster computing. There are three types of cluster computing.
- Cluster load balancing
- High availability clusters
- High performance clusters
Cluster Load Balancing: Load balancing clusters are used in scenarios that require augmented network and internet utilisation. This ensures enhanced performance and increased network capacity.
If you want to distribute user request to multiple nodes, the load balancers prove helpful.
Load balancers check utilisation of all nodes and the node with estimated best performance gets the next user request.
The web server farms are an example of load balancing cluster.
High Availability Clusters: Also known as failover clusters, the high-availability clusters are based on augmented dependency of computers.
The high availability clusters are actually a group of hosts acting like a single system and providing constant uptime. To configure a high availability cluster, all hosts in the cluster must have access to the same storage.
The high availability clusters range from two to dozens of clusters.
High Performance Clusters: This computer networking methodology uses cluster computing and supercomputers to solve the advanced computation concerns. Here, several servers or nodes are connected.
Benefits of Cluster Computing
Different types of cluster computing are in use, depending on performance optimisation, business implementation and architectural preference.
The following are the benefits of cluster computing.
- Cost Efficiency: Compared to the more stable mainframe computers, cluster computing systems are cost effective.
- Processing Speed: The processing speed of these computers is at par with the mainframe computers.
- Expandability: Another advantage of the clustered systems, as they increase the opportunity to add additional systems or resources to existing network of computers.
- Resource Availability: Computers face failures quite often. Failure of one of the active nodes can be passed on to other live nodes, ensuring enhanced availability of systems.
The cluster computing systems ensure better availability and sustained performance, making it significantly popular and attractive in the competitive market.
