Clustering software vs hardware clustering – simplicity vs complexity

This article compares a clustering software with its load balancing, real-time replication and automatic failover features and hardware clustering solutions based on shared disk and load balancers.

• Comparison table
• Clustering software configuration examples
• Comparison video
• More comparisons

Comparison: clustering software vs hardware clustering

Simplicity of a clustering software vs a hardware clustering
Architecture	SafeKit clustering software	Hardware clustering	Hardware load balancers
Features	(1) File replication (2) Failover toolkit (3) Network load balancing	(1) Disk replication (2) Failover toolkit	(1) Network load balancing
Hardware	Standard physical servers, virtual servers or Cloud	Dedicated storage (shared or replicated)	Dedicated network load balancing boxes
Software	Standard editions of Windows, Linux and databases (even the PC and free editions)	Enterprise editions of OS and databases	Software modules in the load balancers
Skills	No specific IT skills for deploying SafeKit	High level skills in storage and OS	High level skills in network

Clustering software configuration examples (databases, web services)

Here are some examples of mirror application modules:

• a generic Windows high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a generic Linux high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a Microsoft SQL Server high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• an Oracle high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a MySQL high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a PostgreSQL high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a Firebird high availability module with synchronous replication and failover,
• a Hyper-V high availability module with VM synchronous replication and failover.

Here are some examples of farm application modules:

• a generic Windows load balancing module with failover,
• a generic Linux load balancing module with failover,
• an IIS load balancing module with failover,
• an Apache load balancing module with failover.

Understand clustering software vs hardware clustering with a video

More comparisons to understand how to achieve simplicity with a clustering software

• Shared nothing vs shared disk cluster
• VM HA vs Application HA
• Byte-level file replication vs block-level disk replication
• Synchronous replication vs asynchronous replication
• Alternative to Microsoft NLB with SafeKit network load balancing in VMware
• Heartbeat, failover and quorum in a Windows or Linux cluster

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