Red Hat Knowledgebase

Red Hat Cluster Manager allows administrators to use commodity hardware to set up a cluster configuration that meets the performance, availability, and data integrity needs of applications and users. To set up a cluster, you must connect the members to the cluster hardware, and configure the environment.

Since Clustering configurations can protect against every single point of failure, administrators must fully understand the needs of their computing environment and data integrity features of different hardware configurations.

A minimum hardware configuration required for cluster operation are as follows:

1. Two servers to run cluster service
2. Ethernet connection for sending heartbeat pings and for client network access
3. Shared disk storage for the shared cluster partitions and service data

This configuration does not guarantee data integrity under all failure conditions, because it does not include power switches.