March 23, 2001, 3:53 PM —
This year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo boasted a whole new crop of clustering products. Commercial clustering solutions are finally ready for harvest. No longer are we stuck in a relative wilderness of Beowulf-only clustering -- the focus of attention for most academic institutions and scientific applications. Now, high-availability, load-balancing opportunities prance about in gleeful attempts to attract the most customers.
It is great to see a wide range of products focused on clustering finally emerge in commercially supported systems. This legitimizes the product, since companies that once hesitated because of the lack of available support can now confidently accept Linux-based clusters from small and large vendors alike.
The show's events took place both on the exhibition floor and in the session presentations. The exhibits were mostly manned by salespeople, but I was able to find technical staff and product managers to explain their products in detail, free of sales-speak.
