When is it necessary to have a high-performance interconnect such as 100BaseT Ethernet or Tandem ServerNet?
Interconnect performance can potentially affect cluster performance under two scenarios: (1) the cluster is running thousands of cluster groups and/or resources, or (2) the cluster is running a scalable, cluster-aware application that uses the interconnect to transfer high volumes of transactions or data. In either of these cases, customers should choose a cluster configuration with a higher-speed interconnect such as 100BaseT, or Tandem ServerNet. Cluster-aware applications that use MSCS to achieve very high levels of scalability will most likely become common in the MSCS “Phase 2” timeframe. Thus higher-speed interconnects are likely to become more important in larger, Phase 2 clusters. There has been a lot of talk about “man in the middle” and “replay” attacks on machines connected across the Internet. Will MSCS clusters be vulnerable to this same type of attack if someone illegally connects to the interconnect between the servers? No. MSCS employs packet signing for intracluster co
