What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget (2024)

What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget (1)

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  • Paul Kirvan

What is a cluster?

Clusters are typically defined as collections or groups of items with similar or different characteristics. The group or collection of items constitutes a cluster. The following are three definitions of a cluster related primarily to technology.

1. Enterprise computing. In a computer system, a cluster is a group of servers and other resources that act like a single system and enable high availability, load balancing and parallel processing. These systems can range from a two-node system of two personal computers (PCs) to a supercomputer that has a cluster architecture.

2. Personal computing. In PC storage technology, a cluster is the logical unit of file storage on a hard drive and is managed by the computer's OS. Any file stored on a hard disk takes up one or more clusters of storage. A file's clusters can be scattered among different locations on the drive. The clusters associated with a file are tracked in the hard disk's file allocation table (FAT). When a user reads a file, the entire file is obtained without the user knowing where it's stored.

Since a cluster is a logical rather than a physical unit – it's not built into the hard disk -- the size varies. The maximum number of clusters on a hard disk depends on the size of a FAT entry. DOS 4.0's FAT entries were 16 bits in length, allowing for a maximum of 65,536 clusters. Windows 95 OSR2 supported a 32-bit FAT entry, allowing enough clusters to support up to 2 TB of data, assuming the hard disk has enough capacity.

In a cluster, the smallest file -- or even a directory -- takes up the entire cluster. Thus, a 10 byte file will take up 2,048 bytes if that's the cluster size. Many OSes set the cluster size default at 4,096 bytes or 8,192 bytes. Until Microsoft Windows 95 OSR2, the largest hard disk that could be supported in a single partition was 512 MB. Larger hard disks could be divided into up to four partitions, each with a FAT capable of supporting 512 MB of clusters.

3. Terminals and workstations. In some products, a cluster is a group of terminals or workstations attached to a common control unit.

Applications and benefits of clustering

Clustering apps, whether resident in the OS or as a separate tool, support many important user requirements, and fall into the following categories:

High-performance computing

High performance computing (HPC) is achieved by using the performance capabilities of multiple processing nodes in the cluster and adding devices to a system. Clustering software ensures added resources meet user requirements for high speed and storage capacity.

What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget (2)

High availability

High availability of processor and storage resources -- also called fault tolerance -- ensures that a loss of or disruption to a processing or storage element in a computer cluster won't disrupt overall production. Members of the cluster can be designated as backup if another device fails. When this happens, cluster failover software quickly shifts processing or storage to the backup or standby system.

High-availability CPU and storage capabilities boost redundancy across a cluster, while operational reliability relies on all cluster members as needed. Clustering multiple devices ensures availability; enough resources to limit the negative effects of a disruption provides resilience.

Load balancing

Load balancing spreads processing activities across cluster nodes to optimize performance and spread workloads evenly across devices. Load balancing clusters improves performance and use among single nodes in a cluster. Processing activities spread across multiple systems achieves active/active processing and economies of scale.

Resource scalability

Computing and storage are expanded or scaled in two ways:

  • vertically, where more storage or processing is added to the primary device; or
  • horizontally, where more devices are added to the cluster itself.

Each approach is used for different user applications. Clustering software accommodates both types of scaling.

Container management

Containers combine all the resources needed to run an application into a single package. Clustering software is used to manage individual containers as if they were members of a cluster.

What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget (3)

Kubernetes open source software facilitates the preparation, organization, scaling and deployment of container-based applications. Kubernetes clusters containing multiple containers, or pods, handle functions such as resource management, load sharing, fault tolerance and security requirements.

Managing cloud resources in clusters

Clustering isn't limited to on-premises data centers. It can be used with cloud computing and storage resources. Clusters are extended beyond the data center into a cloud provider's resources, with a set of storage and compute nodes implemented on VMs.

Clustering plays a key role in high-availability computing. Find out about the three best practices required for high-availability computing.

This was last updated in September 2022

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What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget (2024)

FAQs

What is a cluster? – Definition from TechTarget? ›

Clusters are typically defined as collections or groups of items with similar or different characteristics. The group or collection of items constitutes a cluster.

What is the best definition of cluster? ›

a number of things of the same kind, growing or held together; a bunch: a cluster of grapes. a group of things or persons close together: There was a cluster of tourists at the gate.

What is a technology cluster? ›

Defining Tech Clusters

In addition to these traditional dimensions, we define “tech” clusters to be locations where new products (be they goods or services) and production processes are created that impact multiple parts of the economy.

What is meant by clustering? ›

Clustering is the task of dividing the unlabeled data or data points into different clusters such that similar data points fall in the same cluster than those which differ from the others. In simple words, the aim of the clustering process is to segregate groups with similar traits and assign them into clusters.

What is a cluster in terms of data? ›

A sub-group of data which shares similar characteristics and is significantly different to other clusters in a database, usually defined by the statistical technique of cluster analysis.

What is a cluster example? ›

An example of cluster sampling would be a survey conducted by a company to better understand the preferences and needs of their customers. The company could divide its customer base into clusters based on age, gender, location, etc., and then select a random sample from each cluster for further analysis.

Which best describes a cluster? ›

Clusters are typically defined as collections or groups of items with similar or different characteristics. The group or collection of items constitutes a cluster.

What is the main purpose of cluster? ›

The goal of clustering is to find distinct groups or “clusters” within a data set. Using a machine language algorithm, the tool creates groups where items in a similar group will, in general, have similar characteristics to each other. A few of the popular clustering techniques include: K-Means Clustering, and.

What is the point of a cluster? ›

Clustering is used to identify groups of similar objects in datasets with two or more variable quantities. In practice, this data may be collected from marketing, biomedical, or geospatial databases, among many other places.

What is an example of a cluster system? ›

Some examples of game console clusters are Sony PlayStation clusters and Microsoft Xbox clusters. Another example of consumer game product is the Nvidia Tesla Personal Supercomputer workstation, which uses multiple graphics accelerator processor chips.

What is clustering explained simply? ›

In clustering, the task is to divide the population into several groups in such a way that the data points in the same groups are more similar to each other than the data points in other groups. In short, it is a collection of objects based on their similarities and dissimilarities.

How do you describe clustering? ›

Grouping unlabeled examples is called clustering. As the examples are unlabeled, clustering relies on unsupervised machine learning. If the examples are labeled, then clustering becomes classification.

What is clustering in layman's terms? ›

There are several methods of unsupervised learning, but clustering is far and away the most commonly used unsupervised learning technique, and will be the focus of this article. Clustering refers to the process of automatically grouping together data points with similar characteristics and assigning them to “clusters.”

What is a cluster in software? ›

A cluster is a group of inter-connected computers or hosts that work together to support applications and middleware (e.g. databases). In a cluster, each computer is referred to as a “node”. Unlike grid computers, where each node performs a different task, computer clusters assign the same task to each node.

What is cluster meaning in database? ›

What is a database cluster? Database clustering is the process of connecting more than one single database instance or server to your system. In most common database clusters, multiple database instances are usually managed by a single database server called the master.

What is another word for cluster? ›

A very general synonym is group (or, perhaps more precisely, grouping). The word clutch can also refer to a group or bunch of things. Cluster can also be used as a verb meaning to form into such a group. Synonyms are assemble, gather, and the verb sense of group.

What is a cluster quizlet? ›

"Clustering is the process of grouping data into classes or cluster so that objects within a cluster have high similarity in comparison to one another, but are very dissimilar to objects in other clusters." -cluster = collection of data objects that are similar to each other.

What is the definition of cluster in math? ›

A distinct grouping of neighbouring values in a distribution of a numerical variable that occur noticeably more often than values on each side of these neighbouring values.

What is a cluster in astronomy? ›

Based on observation and theoretical models, many stars are born in clusters — groups of ten or more stars that were formed from the same interstellar cloud. The large globular clusters found orbiting galaxies may have hundreds of thousands or millions of stars, including some of the oldest stars yet observed.

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