McGuire_Ed@GRINNELL.MAILNET (07/23/86)
>Date: Mon, 21 Jul 86 10:12:03 -0500 >From: Mark H. Granoff <mhg@mitre-bedford.ARPA> > >I know of one installation that went from one 780 to a cluster >consisting of a 780 and two 750's. Before they clustered, the 780 >would crash at least once a week. Since clustering, they have had >almost no crashes. I would almost like to think that the poor lonely 780 stopped crashing because they gave it some friends to talk to. An important thing about clusters is that if a node crashes the users aren't transparently switched to another node. For one thing, their terminal line is connected to the node that crashed. However, the user can hopefully run to a different terminal and log onto a working node and keep working. If you give people a terminal server (or even just a cable to each VAX and a rotary switch :-( ) then they don't even have to run across the room. DEC has been talking about (and hopefully doing something about) moving processes to surviving VAXen in the event of a crash. I would like to think that real process checkpointing might show up and make this possible in the future.