Introduction to Clustering

Learn about the working and need for clusters in the cloud.

What is a cluster?

A cluster is a group of computers or hosts working together to support an application. These hosts are interconnected and often have similar configurations. The hosts are commonly known as nodes.

The illustration representing a cluster of computers

In the modern digital world, we are accustomed to using applications that are always available to everyone worldwide, such as social media applications, search engines, email applications, etc. We heavily use these applications online daily. Most of these platforms use clusters to serve their global audience, ensure their services are available, and provide a great user experience.

A computer cluster is used for achieving different goals such as faster processing speed, scaling applications to handle the increased workload, improving the reliability of software applications, etc. Clusters are used for various workloads such as databases, storage, compute-intensive work, etc. The principle is the same and can be used to solve different use cases.

How does it work?

Clustering is achieved by connecting multiple nodes over a network that act as a single unit. A load balancer is commonly used to route the traffic to different nodes in a cluster that can serve incoming requests by ...

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