Re: number of ethernet adapters in a cluster

From: Tony Arnold (tony.arnold_at_man.ac.uk)
Date: 01/05/04 

Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 23:28:01 +0000

David J. Dachtera wrote:
> "Main, Kerry" wrote:

>>As a fyi, for the recent clusters I have been involved with, since 100Mb
>>NICs are extremely cheap these days, I usually recommend setting up
>>multiple VLANS such as the following:
>>
>>VLAN1: Normal TCPIP, DECnet traffic.
>>VLAN2: Cluster traffic
>>VLAN3: System, consolemanager, snmp, device management etc.
>>
>>By separating the protocols into different VLANS, you can increase the
>>overall performance (e.g. balance IO over different PCI buses etc),
>>increase security (VLAN3 access can be set as low as specific MAC
>>addresses etc) and make it easier to troubleshoot issues. As an example,
>>a large FTP job will not impact cluster communications etc.
>>
>>With the above config a total of 6 phsical ports (3 dual port devices)
>>is required per server in a redundant, high availability config.
>
>
> ...which, of course, requires multiple host interfaces (otherwise that
> becomes the bottleneck) which may or may not be possible on some small
> (Micro)VAXes. Dunno 'bout SIMH/Charon-VAX. Also, not sure which small
> (MIcro)VAXes provided 100Bx.
>

And it also requires either a separate physical LAN for each of the
three interfaces (or even six!) which means more hub/switch port
availability, indeed probably separate hub/switches for each physical
LAN. Or it requires switches and routers that support VLAN technology.
I'm not sure if Phillip's network is up to that!

Tony.

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