com.oonics Sharedroot Cluster

One or more com.oonics Sharedroot Cluster provide the basis for the com.oonics Enterprise IT Platform. The com.oonics Sharedroot Cluster solves the known problems (e. g. inconsistent configuration) of traditional approaches and enables low costs due to intelligent data management due to its Single System Image architecture. Further advantages are the easy and high scalability and minimum effort for the system administration.

All servers in the cluster have direct access to the storage devices and are able to both read and write to them concurrently. A shared file system (like e. g. NFS, OCFS2 respectively GFS from Red Hat) connects application servers to a linked storage network (Storage Area Network - SAN) and allows parallel access from all cluster nodes to a central storage system.

The unique feature of ATIX’s com.oonics Sharedroot Clusters is its ability to completely bypass the hard disks, in this case the Dell blades, and boot them directly from the SAN.  This configuration is very easy to scale up or down:  As the operating system is also installed in the storage system, new resources - in the form of new server hardware - can simply be added on the "plug & play" principle. In addition, maintaining the operating system is much easier, as there is always just the one version of the operating system to update.

The complete separation of cluster nodes and central disk storage means that all information with regard to the structure and content of the cluster is consolidated in the central storage system. This means that if a server fails, there is no information lost and thus nothing which has to be later recovered. Thus the restart time for a cluster node is minimized, as only the server hardware has to be replaced in order to return the system to its normal status. This increases the overall availability of the cluster. The cluster can also be remotely monitored and administered using the ATIX solution com.oonics Grayhead.