5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for a Sun Cluster user, May 2, 2005
This review is from: Sun™ Cluster 3 Programming: Integrating Applications into the SunPlex™ Environment (Paperback)
There are a number of ways to learn your way around the Sun Microsystems's Cluster 3 (SC3) software such as spending thousands of dollars on the training course, or you can simply read Sun Cluster 3 Programming by Joseph Bianco, et. al. and save yourself lots of money. This book has been written and reviewed by some of Sun's best architects and engineers, so the information presented is not only actuate but also very applicable to how end-users are using the product. Even if you have taken the training course and have been using the software for sometime, this book is still a valuable reference to be added to your bookshelf.
In short, "Sun Cluster is a powerful software environment capable of providing high levels of application availability to almost any application." There are a number of applications such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2, SAP and many others that can directly take advantage of the SC3 environment, but the book also demonstrates how one can write applications using the provided API to achieve the same goal. Being one of the pioneers in the high-performance computing realm, one can learn much from the ins and outs of the SC3 environment. I personally think that SC3's Resource Group Manager (RGM) is simply the state of the art. RGM, which is covered in detail in this book, is the monitoring module that all the other software applications that run on the cluster interact with using an event-driven callback model. RGM is configured to check the state of the cluster, and in case of an event, use one of the registered callbacks to take actions. The callback methods hover around the application and take actions when necessary. This allows for an automated response in case of a failure, and makes the task of cluster management a lot simpler. In addition to giving an overview of what makes up the Sun Cluster software, the authors go thru the entire set of Resource Management API (RMAPI). RMAPI is used to interface with the RGM, and is integrated into your application to make your application "cluster aware".
The authors introduce two types of applications: cluster aware applications and cluster compatible applications. The chances are that your application is cluster compatible, and with the RGM, you can still manage your applications at a high level (start, stop, check process status, etc). With the RMAPI, you can make your applications be cluster aware, which means that you can more tightly integrate and thus control the internals of your applications with the RGM. The authors spend the part of the book on how to make your application cluster aware. The SC3 API's are written in the C programming language, but various scripting languages can also be used. The API's can also be wrapped in C++, and the object oriented way which the SC3 is architected makes the task of wrapping the API's very simple.
The authors bring the book to a closure with a full blown example of two applications that: one that is cluster compatible and one that we want to make use of the available API's and make cluster aware. The authors go thru the example step-by-step, and explain each step thoroughly. The readers learn the process, and use this example for future development.
I recommend this book to anyone using or interested in the Sun Cluster 3 application. The authors are experienced Sun architects and engineers, and provide the readers with valuable information about the internals of the Sun Cluster 3 environment.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Short and sweet, January 9, 2005
This review is from: Sun™ Cluster 3 Programming: Integrating Applications into the SunPlex™ Environment (Paperback)
This is a quick jaunt through the Sun clustering APIs, primarily in C. You will get a good introduction from it, but there will be a lot more to learn. There is a practical example with MySQL. Overall the tone is pretty dry and terse. The introduction should have been a lot longer. More information on hardware configurations, and some reference to Java would have been nice as well.
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