Introduction to Clustering

The clustering solution is based on splitting Parallels Business Automation - Standard parts by different hardware nodes. There are three common parts of Parallels Business Automation - Standard software that produce high load:

• front-end (less loading)
• back-end
• database (most loading)

In case of front-end that produces less load, a node will be combined with load balancing system and synchronization server. The MySQL database server can be clustered natively. Parallels Business Automation - Standard back-end nodes can be replicated many times without any limitations.

Parallels Business Automation - Standard can be installed and successfully used without any clustering. After the node becomes overused the good solution is to move out MySQL server from the management node to a separate server. In case a new MySQL server resources are insufficient a database cluster can be created to prevent this. The time for next step comes when the Parallels Business Automation - Standard management node becomes overloaded. The best solution to solve the problem is to set a cluster for Parallels Business Automation - Standard back-end and load balancing between them.

Here are a few words about load balancing system. The key purposes of the system are to track users' requests and distribute them uniformly between all of available back-end systems. In addition, the load balancing system monitors back-end nodes availability and latency. This allows a balancing mechanism to provide more flexible and powerful loading results.

Another situation is when a hosting business is planned to be huge, so Parallels Business Automation - Standard cluster should be set first to prevent any downtimes. Actually, this situation does not call for any actions different from last stages of clustering described above, so we are not focus on any individual use-cases.

Here, client workstations are located in the "untrusted" Internet area. Parallels Business Automation - Standard front-end node is only accessible through firewall. All other Parallels Business Automation - Standard nodes are located in the "trusted" Ethernet area so there are no any additional resources spending for security.

In a few words, the clustering process may consist of the following steps:

1. Move the database from the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Management Node to a separate server.
2. Create Parallels Business Automation - Standard backend node(s). If Parallels Business Automation - Standard is installed at a Virtuozzo Container (the most widely used approach), this can be done by cloning the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Container. Allocate IPs to backend nodes and assign hostnames. The original Parallels Business Automation - Standard Container will later also be used as a backend node.
3. Create the frontend node. To this effect, create a 'light' Container and install Parallels Business Automation - Standard at it. Then run hspc-cluster.pl --frontend at the frontend node and specify all the backend nodes when prompted.

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