Novell® Cluster Services™ SDK (NCS) aggregates a number of NetWare™ servers into a cluster (referred to as nodes), which enables high availability of applications, data, and other servers. If a node fails on any NCS-enabled cluster, resources automatically failover to other nodes in the cluster and clients are able to transparently reconnect to those network services.
In addition, Novell eDirectory™ enables single-point administration of clustered servers in an NCS environment.
Developing clustering solutions is in direct response to the need for maintaining high availability of network resources. High availability ensures that network users can constantly get to their data, applications, and services on the network. The nemesis of high availability is anything that prevents users from accessing their network resources. Lack of access can be caused by any number of problems, including
Physical failures in system hardware and components
Design flaws or bugs in the system’s software or hardware
Human error during network administration and operations
Environmental problems ranging from cooling system failures to natural disasters
Planned maintenance shutdowns
NCS is designed to help you improve system uptime on both internal and external network systems.
IMPORTANT:All Unicode names are UTF8 strings on Linux.
Before discussing actual implementation of the NCS API, you might want to review some of the following concepts: