Cluster: find out what it is, where they are and why it matters to your business
Every day and every moment we have new technological possibilities at our disposal to help us achieve a good performance in the internet media, for example.
Clustering is often applied in many contexts, but when it comes to computing, it refers to the architecture of a system that joins two or more computers together as one.
Clustering is related to a series of categories called High Availability (HA) and Contingency, which is a support of high availability that performs a concurrent work.
A cluster always differs from the other, as there are different types of supercomputers focused on the various benefits of merging and therefore are best suited for certain tasks and markets.
We’ll talk later in this article about cluster types and their functionality, so if you want to better understand the concept and possibilities of cluster application and expansion, read through.
What is physical and virtual cluster?
The physical cluster is face to face and works from 2 servers that work together. Virtual clustering dynamically integrates computers connected to the network because existing “knots” can be added or removed as needed.
In addition to these two, there are other types of clusters with applications that can be satisfactorily serviced through high performance computing, that is:
- Weather systems;
- Genetic mapping tools;
- Geothermal simulators;
- Three-dimensional image rendering programs etc.
However, while they offer these features and there are many types of clusters, the main ones are: high performance, high availability and load balancing, which, by the way, is offered by senhasegura.
How to understand High Availability Cluster (HA)?
High availability (HA) can be classified for use in hardware or application. The difference between them is that in High Hardware Availability, there is a heartbeat connection between hardware components, which ensures a change in hardware if an interruption occurs.
Unlike Application High Availability, where three or more instances operate in conjunction with a synchronized database and under a load balancer, which distributes requests across instances within the cluster.
Thus, the work is distributed among several instances with security gain, so that if any of them stop working, the others can continue operating normally.
Why is is important to have High Availability (HA) applied in your business?
Nowadays, every department in a company needs internet access to communicate with its suppliers, employees, managers and customers through email, instant messaging, VoIP, CRM etc., and not only that, they also need it to access videos on YouTube, social networks etc., during the lunch break.
It’s no secret that as a way to ensure business security, consumer-facing applications and services are now moving to cloud and hybrid models.
And it’s no wonder that in some companies, employees make use of the G-suite with Google Drive to share, create, and store their documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This has been happening, because companies have seen that internal IT lacks the tools and experts to keep the business running.
Therefore, this becomes a threat to the company, so when a high availability strategy is applied, it is possible to serve customers with quality and full availability.
Besides that, the High Availability architecture goes together with online backup and emergency recovery, but that’s not its focus. Its focus is on design and network investment.
What are the aspects of Disaster Recovery (DR)?
In the case of Disaster Recovery (DR), there is an architecture that enables the recovery of infrastructure, so if any natural or human accident occurs, DR restores functions within a reasonable period of time.
This way, you can use both HA and DR together for more robust security. Also, the presence of latency and cluster expansion are related to the concepts of HA and DR and it is important to note that the low latency between the ‘’knots’’ ensures data synchronization between them and this is what enables the expansion of the ‘’knots’’ in the cluster.
What is the Load Balancing Cluster?
For the cluster, load balancing is related to processing tasks that are evenly distributed among “knots” and focuses on getting each computer to receive and fulfill a request without sharing a task with other machines.
The load balancing cluster needs to be able to distribute requests evenly so that it can verify which machine is handling the least amount of tasks and thus direct to a new request.
How to implement High Availability in a company?
A High Availability infrastructure provided by senhasegura ensures that you can, along with Disaster Recovery in the presence of cluster latency and expansion, as well as load balancing, serve your customers with quality in order to value their business safely. .
The architecture of senhasegura operates with two databases: the first one is for storing settings and the other with the logs and videos generated. Both characteristics vary from one scenario to another and the type of data trafficked as shown in the following chart:
senhasegura is designed to allow you to operate in an architecture with maximum resistance to hardware, software and power failures, thus ensuring that services are always available.
The architectures implemented with senhasegura solution to achieve maximum availability include such things as: multiple Domain Controllers, clusters, and appliances with redundant power supplies, network cards, and disks.
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