Digital Equipment Corp, pioneer of the processor clustering concept with its VAXclusters, has introduced an OpenVMS-based clustering capability for its Alpha AXP RISC architecture nearly one year ahead of schedule. The company says it had planned to offer the capability in the middle of next year, but now says that users will be able to cluster OpenVMS VAX systems with OpenVMS AXP systems this spring. The capability is now called VMSclusters, to reflect its support on both VAX and Alpha AXP, and the new release will include several different modes of clustering. These are Cluster Interconnect; Digital Storage Systems Interconnect; Network Interconnect; Mixed Interconnect combinations of the other three; Mixed Architecture Clusters Alpha AXP and VAX in same cluster; and Alpha AXP Clusters. DEC reckons that more than 90% of today’s VAXcluster customers will be able to enhance their systems by adding an Alpha AXP system.DEC’s clustering technology enables allows multiple systems to operate as a single system to provide fault resilience and high availability for applications: each machine in the cluster runs its own copy of the operating system with the clustering software under the control of one of them. It claims that since 1983, over 25,000 clusters have been built, supporting more than 10m OpenVMS users worldwide. The new release supports up to 15 Alpha AXP systems with computing power well in excess of 3,000 SPECmarks or 4 GIPS. Volume Shadowing for OpenVMS and VAX Disk Striping software are separately licensed layered products, and will be available for the Alpha AXP in the near future. The new VMSclusters fully supports the use of FDDI as a network backbone interconnecting clusters nodes, and support for native FDDI adaptors as a cluster interconnect is promised. No prices given.
