▷ Sysadmins: Try Using a Cluster Manager to Simplify Your Work

You may not be using a cluster manager to help you administer your cluster today, and that's understandable. Many of us learned to build clusters from the ground up — setting up hardware, compiling software, and creating configuration files in vi. It's only natural that many administrators have developed a do-it-yourself ethos that leads them to avoid using an integrated solution like a cluster manager.

There's nothing wrong with DIY. In fact there are some real benefits. Doing it yourself gives you a solid understanding of how your system works, but when you have to scale a cluster up or down, doing things the DIY way can get old fast. Errors in configuration files can become a bear to track down, and maintenance can be time consuming. And what about the rest of your team? Does your entire staff have the right set of skills to keep things humming along if you're not available?

Before you dismiss cluster managers out of hand, consider the benefits they offer. Many have discovered that a cluster manager can be a life saver. Here are some features to look for:

1. Simplifies routine cluster management tasks
2. Makes scaling the cluster easy
3. Provides everything you need to manage your cluster day to day.

Those are some of the guidelines we used in designing our product. Bright Cluster Manager provides everything you need to deploy, monitor, and manager clusters of any size:

• Bright Cluster Manager will configure and install all of the software you need for a working cluster from bare metal servers in less time than you think.
• Manage your cluster from a unified interface and use that same interface for everything you need to do with your cluster. 
• Monitors the health of your cluster 24/7.
• Lets you scale your cluster easily by adding more physical servers, or using Amazon's cloud.

If you'd like to talk about how Bright Cluster Manager can help you, please contact us.