Oracle Solaris Cluster (sometimes Sun Cluster or SunCluster) is a

high-availability cluster High-availability clusters (also known as HA clusters, fail-over clusters) are groups of computers that support server applications that can be reliably utilized with a minimum amount of down-time. They operate by using high availability softwa ...

software product for

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

, originally created by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

, which was acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

in 2010. It is used to improve the availability of software services such as

databases In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

, file sharing on a network,

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

, or other applications. Sun Cluster operates by having redundant computers or nodes where one or more computers continue to provide service if another fails. Nodes may be located in the same data center or on different continents. Sun Microsystems Solaris computer cluster

Sun Microsystems Solaris computer cluster

Background

Solaris Cluster provides services that remain available even when individual nodes or components of the cluster fail. Solaris Cluster provides two types of HA services: failover services and scalable services. To eliminate single points of failure, a Solaris Cluster configuration has redundant components, including multiple network connections and data storage which is multiply connected via a

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from ser ...

. Clustering software such as Solaris Cluster is a key component in a

Business Continuity Business continuity may be defined as "the capability of an organization to continue the delivery of products or services at pre-defined acceptable levels following a disruptive incident", and business continuity planning (or business continuity a ...

solution, and the Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition was created specifically to address that requirement. Solaris Cluster is an example of kernel-level clustering software. Some of the processes it runs are normal system processes on the systems it operates on, but it does have some special access to operating system or

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

functions in the host systems. In June 2007, Sun released the source code to Solaris Cluster via the

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around th ...

HA Clusters community.

Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition

SCGE is a management framework that was introduced in August 2005. It enables two Solaris Cluster installations to be managed as a unit, in conjunction with one or more

Data replication Replication in computing involves sharing information so as to ensure consistency between redundant resources, such as software or hardware components, to improve reliability, fault-tolerance, or accessibility. Terminology Replication in comp ...

products, to provide Disaster Recovery for a computer installation. By ensuring that data updates are continuously replicated to a remote site in near-real time, that site can rapidly take over the provision of a service in the event that the entire primary site is lost as a result of a disaster, either natural or man-made. This is a key to minimizing the

Recovery point objective Disaster recovery is the process of maintaining or reestablishing vital infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster, such as a storm or battle.It employs policies, tools, and procedures. Disaster recovery focuses on t ...

(RPO) and

Recovery time objective Disaster recovery is the process of maintaining or reestablishing vital infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster, such as a storm or battle.It employs policies, tools, and procedures. Disaster recovery focuses on t ...

(RTO) for the service.

Proxy file system

PxFS (Proxy file system) is a distributed,

high availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. Fo ...

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...

compliant filesystem internal to Solaris Cluster nodes. Global devices in Sun Cluster are made possible by PxFS.

Supported applications

Solaris Cluster uses software components called ''agents'' which monitor an application to detect whether it is operating correctly, and take action if a problem is detected. Agents for common applications are included such as

Siebel Systems Siebel Systems, Inc. () was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably Siebel CRM. The company was founded by Thomas Siebel and Pat ...

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...

Livecache, WebLogic Server, Sun Java Application Server,

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

Oracle RAC In database computing, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) — an option for the Oracle Database software produced by Oracle Corporation and introduced in 2001 with Oracle9i — provides software for clustering and high availability in Oracle ...

Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Applications comprise the applications software or business software of the Oracle Corporation both in the cloud and on-premises. The term refers to the non-database and non-middleware parts. The suite of applications includes enterprise re ...

and

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among others; there is also a wizard which allows the cluster implementer to create agents for other applications.

Releases

* Oracle Solaris Cluster 11.2

References

External links

Solaris Cluster webpage at Oracle

OpenSolaris HA Clusters community

Sun BluePrint: Using Solaris Cluster and Sun Cluster Geographic Edition with Virtualization TechnologiesBlogs about Solaris Cluster - Sun Cluster Oasis
Greg Pfister: ''In Search of Clusters'', Prentice Hall, * Evan Marcus, Hal Stern: ''Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems'', John Wiley & Sons, * Joseph Bianco, Peter Lees, Kevin Rabito: ''Sun Cluster 3 Programming: Integrating Applications into the SunPlex Environment'', Prentice Hall, * Richard Elling, Tim Read: ''Designing Enterprise Solutions with Sun Cluster 3.0'', Prentice Hall,

Prentice Hall, {{Solaris High-availability cluster computing Sun Microsystems software Cluster computing