Shared disks MP

The advantages of shared disks are that part of a familiar programming model is retained (disk data is addressable and coherent, memory is not), and high availability is much easier than with shared-memory systems. The disadvantages are limited scalability due to bottlenecks in physical and logical access to shared data.

Processors have their own memory and cache. The processors run in parallel and share disks. Each processor runs a copy of the operating system and the processors are loosely coupled (connected through LAN). Communication between processors is done through message-passing.