Honeywell Bull Ltd has added a controller which enables its DPS 6 and DPS 6 Plus mini-computers to be clustered in a transaction processing environment. Rather like the DEC VAXcluster facility, the new Honeywell Bull offering enables up to 16 processors to be clustered under a new release, 4.4, of the TPS 6 transaction processing software, and although full load sharing of TPS 6 applications can be effected across the cluster, applications such as the OnePlus office automation software can be installed on a single CPU within the cluster. By adding the Diram-32 Disk Management Processor, high availability clusters can be created, and the controller is also claimed to improve response times dramatically. The QR6 query facility will run across the cluster, and Distributed Processing Facility, DPF, enables the user to specify a processor within the cluster to act as a gateway to another transaction processing system. Set to arrive with the West Indies cricket team in the summer of 1988, TPS6 costs about UKP5,000 per DPS 6 processor. The cluster controller hardware starts at UKP22,500 and the Diram-32 disk management processor starts at UKP32,000 with an average configuration at about UKP45,000. The new clustering release of TPS 6 was developed at Honeywell Bull’s Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire base.
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