As you may know, Iâm pretty interested in the newest round of clustered computing these days. Iâm digging in pretty deep to see how well-suited it is to the enterprise, and how it is best used/architected/implemented.
There is a reason for that, and I think this graphic probably gives it away:
Youâll note that âcontainer provisioningâ is in there. It doesnât need to be. If your environment is running without containers at this time, then simply remove that block from both sides of the diagram and remove container from the titles.
The fact is that there is one less step in any provisioning environment short of one app, one server.
And remember that this abstraction doesnât touch on storage provisioning, AAA or OS upgrades at two different levels (or in some scenarios three).
And thatâs a big deal. Not just because you have one less layer for deployment, you also have one less layer for maintenance, one less layer for security, one less layer for logging ⊠Itâs a big deal. As Iâve mentioned before, we have increased the complexity of the operations environment to the point that some form of DevOps is nearly required to keep a modern or cutting-edge data center running smoothly. The newest round of clustering solutions removes one layer from the architecture stack, reducing that complexity a little bit. Of course, it is just a slowing in the growth of complexity, but itâs better than a âDamn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!â approach to complexity.
The thing is that clustering software has been around for a very long timeâI was briefed back when VMware was just making a name for itself about a clustering solution that was aimed at gaming sites. I never wrote about it because VMware stole the thunder, and the company couldnât reference any customers except gambling websitesânot exactly an easy comparison to make with enterprise environments. This briefing was my first, but clustering existed long before that, even.
But this round is different than most recent clustering solutions. It focuses on resources and scheduling, not on making a special-purpose large-sized computer. This round of clustering software makes a large computer that looks to apps like Linux. Thatâs a far more useful abstraction, if it works without a ton of overhead.
And the overhead is what Iâll be digging into over the next few weeks.
But yes, I think itâs a great idea. Give me a big old expandable Linux box, make it look exactly like Linux to my apps and letâs see what it means for app growth.
â Don Macvittie
