what are star clusters and cubes?

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Burrito
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what are star clusters and cubes?

Post by Burrito »

As a lot of you know, I just started a new job. One of the first tasks I was given was to do some research on star clusters and cubes as they relate to programming. Google wasn't very helpful for me on this so I thought I'd turn here to see if any of you could shed some light.

I honestly have no clue where to even begin and the problem is, nor does the person who gave me the task. I know it has something to do with a data repository and an exchange of data from several different systems to this repository....a datamart if you will.

the ultimate goal is going to be to extract data from this datamart from all of the different systems in an effort to 'tie' them together. (some is unidata, a few mssql servers, one MySQL server, and a few other sources).

can someone steer me in the right direction on finding information for star clusters and cubes?

thanks,

Burr
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

From my limited understanding.. and in hardware terms (but heavily linked to software) a Star cluster is a cluster of machines that relate to each other, and all communicate to/via a central machine, often dubbed the master. For an example, we have a cluster of servers here (102 to be exact) that are used for running batch jobs and we have one master machine which is used to schedule the jobs. The rest perform the tasks. Called a Star Cluster because the rest of the machines revolve (orbit..) around one machine (the star..)

A Cube is a star cluster without the Master. A hive of machines all able to communicate with each other and even share the same task. All machines are often identical in terms of what they do, there isn't any heirachy for lack of a better word.


I would like to point out, the above may be incredibly wrong.
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Burrito
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Post by Burrito »

ok, so really this is nothing to do with programming but rather sounds more like the networking side of the house. I guess it has some relationship to programming insofar as I'll probably be the one who has to figure out how the cluster gets set up to act as a single unit.

thanks jenk, I'll see what I can dig up on this.
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

Don't take my word as gospel.. like I say, I'm hardly confident that I am right on this.

However for clustering, there is a large amount of programming to do.

See here for info: http://www.beowulf.org/
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

I have no idea but it will likely be a network architecture term yes.

A looped cluster is just a series of machines all acting as master to the server at the left and slave to the server at the right so you get a complete loop.

A guess then by that logic a star cluster just has a central master surrounded by slaves.

If these are database servers it's possible you'll need to know a little bit about the infrastructure of the cluster because where you have one master and a group of slaves you CANNOT insert a record onto a slave. You can insert onto the master and select from any of the slaves though.

Typing "star clutser" into Google will likely just churn out astronomical results though :P
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

d11wtq wrote:Typing "star clutser" into Google will likely just churn out astronomical results though :P
Nothing to do with the topic, but that was fantastic.
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Burrito
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Post by Burrito »

Jcart wrote:Nothing to do with the topic, but that was fantastic.
indeed...I'm wondering if it was intended :lol:
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Post by John Cartwright »

Burrito wrote:
Jcart wrote:Nothing to do with the topic, but that was fantastic.
indeed...I'm wondering if it was intended :lol:
Now that I think about it, d11 isn't capable of humor. Must have been a coincidence. :wink:

Okay lets get back on topic.. sorry about that :D
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Burrito
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Post by Burrito »

awww....I love you Chris!
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

What did I do? :D
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

:lol:
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

I asked my network guru at work about this and he never heard of either term. I'll keep asking around and see if someone else knows anything about them.
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Post by Christopher »

I have heard of those. Star is the most common -- hubs and switches. Cube is pretty obscure. If you Google "star network topology" or "cube network topology" you will find information about networks. Whether it is what you are looking for is hard to tell from the guidance you were given.
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