Re: A proposal for a General Clustering Framework

[Alan Robertson <alanr@unix.sh>]

Bill Todd wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Greg Lindahl" <lindahl@conservativecomputer.com>
> To: "linux-cluster" <linux-cluster@nl.linux.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 1:44 PM
> Subject: Re: A proposal for a General Clustering Framework
> 
> > On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 01:34:59PM -0400, Bill Todd wrote:
> >
> > > An aspect that I haven't yet seen covered (though I might have missed
> it) is
> > > the efficient processing of large chunks of data - e.g., file/database
> pages
> > > (which these days can easily reach 128 KB in size
> >
> > Gee, I didn't realize we were building such a general purpose
> > protocol just to handle our cluster control messages.
> 
> Perhaps my impression that we were discussing a more general messaging
> mechanism arose from comments about multiple language bindings and use by
> applications.  Or from my suspicion that using something as general as even
> an XML subset seems like gross overkill if all we're talking about is a
> relatively limited set of messages under our own control.
> 
> But if the assumption indeed is that things like cluster file systems will
> roll their own message facilities rather than use (or build upon) those
> under discussion here, then I withdraw my observations.

The message transport under discussion is intended to be for control data,
not bulk application data.  And, most likely a filesystem would have to
interface with these mechanisms, to get needed services.  They might even
want to use them for some of their own control needs.

But, they're not intended for bulk data transport.

Thanks for the question though, since we've all been discussing this over a
period of years we forgot to state that assumption.

	Thanks!

	-- Alan Robertson
	   alanr@unix.sh

Linux-cluster: generic cluster infrastructure for Linux
Archive:       http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-cluster/