Highly available and efficient load cluster management system using SNMP and Web

To cope with the explosive increase in the number of requests to Internet server systems, one popular solution is a load-balancing technique that uses a dispatcher in the front-end of a cluster farm. A cluster group is viewed as a single system image with very high performance and also gives a good scalability. But a failure in any single host in a cluster group can cause an overall system failure. The high availability in a cluster group is desperately needed for stable and fault-tolerant service to clients. So it is necessary to develop a cluster management system that integrates all these cluster functions and user-friendly management functions. We present the design and implementation of a load cluster management system (LCMS) based on SNMP and Web technology. Our LCMS implementation has been deployed on a commercial ultra dense server like an EnterFLEX. First we examine the requirements of LCMS to provide efficient and stable management operations and high availability. Our LCMS follows the client-server management paradigm of SNMP, and consists of three managers having different roles, which distribute management functionality to all hosts in a cluster group. By using SNMP we can reduce the network bandwidth required in management operations. This system also provides automatic cluster configuration and current status monitoring of each host in a cluster group through a Java and Web technologies.