Microsoft Cluster Server is Microsoft’s offer to the world of cluster computing. It is, essentially, a system for linking together machines for the purposes of supercomputing and reliability.
Before we can talk about Microsoft Cluster Server in general, we should talk about cluster computing in general. The idea behind cluster computing is to build upon the capabilities of single machines by allowing multiple machines to work in consort.
You may wonder what the difference is between a server cluster and any other server system. Most network that employ servers don’t actually integrate the capacities of their constituent systems. The idea is to share data and resources, facilitate online communication and make it possible to distribute the workload required to complete a given project among many employees and workstations. The programs involved usually don’t exceed the capacities of an individual personal computer.
Another setup that is similar to, but significantly different from, cluster computing is mainframe computing. A mainframe centralizes processing power in an extremely powerful machine while being accessible from multiple workstations. There are specialized purposes for which a mainframe system will be preferred, but for most purposes cluster computing makes it possible to meet or exceed the capabilities of a mainframe at a fraction of the cost.
Computers can be clustered in various different ways to accomplish different tasks. Server clustering is often used in web hosting to ensure the accessibility of sites and site resources. Servers generally hold redundant data and are setup to dynamically share the load between them so that even in periods of extremely high traffic volume a high quality and speed of service can be guaranteed. They also ensure that, even if one server goes down, the site in question will remain online. A similar type of hosting is to setup a grid of servers. In such a system redundant servers are set up in varying geographical areas to ensure high-speed responses even when suffers accesses the site from different places. This type of setup also offers load sharing capabilities based on the relative distance to a given server.
Servers can also be clustered over a WAN (Wide Are Network, the Internet for example) or a LAN (Local Are Network) for the purposes of linking the processing capabilities of various machines. This can potentially provide vast processing power that can be brought to bare on advanced data analysis tasks. Clustering computers can also make it possible to offload the processing of a given program onto another machine in the event of an error or system crash, making it possible to ensure the availability of a given program.
This capacity, known as Failover Clustering, is one of the features focused on in the Microsoft Cluster Server line of products. Microsoft actually incorporates the ability to cluster computers into its Windows Server Enterprise Edition, but it also offers a specialty software suit for high performance computing called Windows HPC server. High performance computing specialized in delivering high processing capacity necessary to solve advanced computation problems and has uses in business and especially scientific research.
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