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

high-availability cluster In computing, high-availability clusters (HA clusters) or 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 sof ...

software product for

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It 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 ** ''Sol ...

, originally created by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

, which was acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

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 or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and ana ...

, file sharing on a network,

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to Commerce, commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling Goods and services, products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on tec ...

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

s, 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 A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

or on different continents. 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 device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...

. 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 ...

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 for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

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 refers to maintaining multiple copies of data, processes, or resources to ensure consistency across redundant components. This fundamental technique spans databases, file systems, and distributed systems, serving to impro ...

products, to provide

Disaster Recovery IT disaster recovery (also, simply disaster recovery (DR)) is the process of maintaining or reestablishing vital infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster, such as a storm or battle. DR employs policies, tools, ...

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 (RPO) and Recovery time objective (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 that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. There is now more dependence on these systems as a result of modernization ...

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 application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

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 an American 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 Sieb ...

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in the 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 s ...

Livecache, WebLogic Server,

GlassFish GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by OmniFish, Fujitsu and Payara. The support ...

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, 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 rel ...

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 d ...

, Oracle E-Business Suite and

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

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,
Kristien Hens, Michael Loebmann: ''Creating Highly Available Database Solutions: Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Sun Cluster 3.x Software''
Prentice Hall, {{Solaris High-availability cluster computing Sun Microsystems software Cluster computing