What are Clustered Systems?
A clustered system, or computer cluster, is a group of interconnected computers forming a single system together with the components cooperating in providing high availability, load balancing, and parallel processing. Clusters, units, or nodes are usually in the same physical space and are interoperable.
Some characteristics of the clustered systems are the following:
- Centralized Management: Centralized management point with a single node that oversees all activities
- High Availability: Clustering provides redundancy, ensuring that if one node fails, others can take over its workload.
- Load Balancing: Balanced load by redistributing activities to various nodes most equally.
- Parallel processing: A cluster can do many tasks together thanks to the various nodes producing high-level computation.
Examples of clustered systems include high-performance computing (HPC) environments, web server farms, and database clusters.
Distributed System vs. Clustered System
When discussing scalability and reliability as well as performance in the context of computing, terms such as distributed systems and clustered systems are unavoidably mentioned. Even though they have a few common characteristics, they are two different ideas with different architectures and usage. It is important to understand the distinctions between these systems to efficiently and effectively develop solutions for technological domains.
Important Topics for Distributed System vs Clustered System
- What are Distributed Systems?
- What are Clustered Systems?
- Distributed Systems vs. Clustered Systems
- Use Cases of Distributed Systems
- Use Cases of Clustered Systems