Compaq ProLiant 6400R Compaq's Cluster Management Initiative

HARVARD RESEARCH GROUP

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HARVARD RESEARCH GROUP

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HARVARD, MA 01451 USA

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Copyright 1999 Harvard Research Group.

Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized.

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COMPAQ’S CLUSTER MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE

Harvard Research Group has determined through extensive primary and secondary

research that today’s business managers want Enterprise Management Systems that can

help them gain control over the business process and reduce complexity. IT managers are

increasingly looking for ways to effectively and efficiently implement new technologies

while at the same time achieve a seamless and cost effective way to manage their systems

and software. They want to "virtualize" their system environment and manage it as if it

were a single logical system.

At the same time, the rapid growth in the number of

business-critical applications running on Intel-based systems coupled with the need for

high availability and continuous data access is driving the demand for clustered servers.

While clusters help solve problems with availability and scalability, they also bring

increased complexity, immature management tools, and added cost. This situation is most

evident in the Intel server market where the use of Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) is

accelerating faster than the capability of the tools that manage it.

Harvard Research Group has spoken with more than 700 users of highly available

systems. Our findings and research show that users of high availability systems typically

have mixed operating system and hardware environments, and believe that current cluster

system management tools are too complex and costly.

They view the current set of

cluster administration tools as point products that are difficult to integrate, proprietary in

nature, and require too much time and money to properly implement.

Many of them have

expressed the desire to reduce the complexity of cluster configuration, administration,

and problem determination / resolution. At the same time, they have expressed a desire to

minimize the number of interfaces and tools they need to manage their system and

clustered environments.

Harvard Research Group believes that all clustered solutions, still lack adequate and

extensible cluster monitor / management tools.

While there are management tools that

partially address this issue for a particular operating environment (HP/UX, Solaris, NT),

they tend to be limited in their functionality and unable to address the larger issue of

managing multiple and dispersed cluster environments. This is contributing to the high

cost of ownership of server hardware and causing potential profits to be consumed by

increased administrative staff and lower user productivity. Studies have shown that

deploying manageable systems in concert with well managed IT processes can create

actual value for a company. It stands to reason, then, that tightly integrating cluster

management tools with the non-clustered systems management interface should create

more value.

It appears that Compaq, in concert with its acquisitions of Tandem Computer and Digital

Equipment Corporation, is building itself into an enterprise systems provider with some

key strides in changing the direction of enterprise systems management. In doing so,

Compaq has defined some interesting goals and is delivering on these goals.

Compaq’s E2000 Platform Architecture and Cluster Management Vision