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Red Hat High Availability |
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Introduction In early 2002 Red Hat introduced the first member of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux family of products - Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (originally called Red Hat Linux Advanced Server). Since then the family of products has grown steadily and now includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (for entry/mid range servers) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (for desktops/workstations). These products are designed specifically for use in enterprise environments to deliver superior application support, performance, availability and scalability. The original release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, version 2.1, included a high availability clustering feature as part of the base product. The feature was not included in the smaller Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES product. However, with the success of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family it became clear that high availability clustering was a feature that should be made available for both AS and ES server products. Consequently, with the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 3, in October 2003, the high availability clustering feature was packaged into an optional layered product, called Red Hat Cluster Suite, and certified for use on both the Enterprise Linux AS and Enterprise Linux ES products. Red Hat Cluster Suite Overview Red Hat Cluster Suite includes two distinct clustering features. The major feature, and the focus of this white paper, is the high availability clustering capability, called Cluster Manager. This provides continued application operation in the event of server shutdown or failure. The second feature, called IP Load Balancing (originally called Piranha), provides network load balancing. It allows a front-end server to redirect IP network packets to a group of back-end servers in a balanced manner, thereby improving the total network performance.
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