[CLUE-Tech] State of Art in Clustering?

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Keith Hellman wrote:

>
> It looks like I'm going to be working (for the next several weeks) on
> specing out API + Schema + architecture for a client proposal.
>
> Unfortunately, I can't divulge alot of details.  My concern is that I'm
> SURE I'll be asked about opensource technologies such as Apache, Linux
> Clusters, and Postgres.

Is it fair to the client to be doing this if you're not
familiar with the technologies you're going to be working
with?

> * Would anyone recommend a particular distro (I know RH & SuSE have
> clustering packages on them...).

You don't want to use a stock distribution for clustering.
Scyld specializes in this kind of thing:
http://www.scyld.com/

> * I'd like to do a little cramming this weekend - any recommendations
> on sites or documentation people have found particularly useful?
>
> * Any other advice or insights would be appreciated.

Depending on what you're doing, I'd have to say that a weekend of
cramming is not going to be sufficient to become a clustering,
Apache, PostgreSQL expert. If that's what the client is expecting,
you might want to be upfront about it.

I'm all for being self-taught and figuring things out, and if
the client understands that you're green in these areas, then
that's cool -- but I've worked with consultants before who
didn't know what they were doing and they did more harm than
good for everyone involved -- both by costing both companies a
lot of money, and harming the reputation of the consultants.

Just my 2 cents.

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
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