A shared-nothing architecture (SN) is a
distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
architecture in which each update request is satisfied by a single node (processor/memory/storage unit) in a
computer cluster
A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software.
The comp ...
. The intent is to eliminate contention among nodes. Nodes do not share (independently access) the same memory or storage. One alternative architecture is shared everything, in which requests are satisfied by arbitrary combinations of nodes. This may introduce contention, as multiple nodes may seek to update the same data at the same time.
SN eliminates
single points of failure, allowing the overall system to continue operating despite failures in individual nodes and allowing individual nodes to upgrade without a system-wide shutdown.
A SN system can scale simply by adding nodes, since no central resource bottlenecks the system. In databases, a term for the part of a database on a single node is a ''
shard
Shard or sherd is a sharp piece of glass, pottery or stone.
Shard may also refer to:
Places
* Shard End, a place in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Architecture
* Dresden Shard, a redesign of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, German ...
''. A SN system typically partitions its data among many nodes. A refinement is to replicate commonly used but infrequently modified data across many nodes, allowing more requests to be resolved on a single node.
History
Michael Stonebraker
Michael Ralph Stonebraker (born October 11, 1943) is a computer scientist specializing in database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational databa ...
at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
used the term in a 1986 database paper.
Teradata
Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech a ...
delivered the first SN database system in 1983.
Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for Automated teller machine, ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applicati ...
released
NonStop SQL NonStop SQL is a commercial relational database management system that is designed for fault tolerance and scalability, currently offered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The latest version is SQL/MX 3.4.
The product was originally developed by Tan ...
, a shared nothing database, in 1984.
Applications
Shared-nothing is popular for
web development
Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications ...
.
Shared-nothing architectures are prevalent for
data warehousing
In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...
applications, although requests that require data from multiple nodes can dramatically reduce throughput.
See also
References
{{Reflist
Data partitioning
Distributed computing architecture