RSCT concepts

Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology (RSCT) is a set of software components that together provide a comprehensive clustering environment for AIX®, Linux®, Solaris, and Windows operating systems. RSCT is the infrastructure used by a variety of IBM® products to provide clusters with improved system availability, scalability, and ease of use.

RSCT includes the following components:
  • Resource monitoring and control (RMC) subsystem. This is the scalable, reliable backbone of RSCT. It runs on a single machine or on each node (operating system image) of a cluster and provides a common abstraction for the resources of the individual system or the cluster of nodes. You can use RMC for single system monitoring or for monitoring nodes in a cluster. In a cluster, however, RMC provides global access to subsystems and resources throughout the cluster, thus providing a single monitoring and management infrastructure for clusters.
  • RSCT core resource managers. A resource manager is a software layer between a resource (a hardware or software entity that provides services to some other component) and RMC. A resource manager maps programmatic abstractions in RMC into the actual calls and commands of a resource.
  • RSCT cluster security services. This RSCT component provides the security infrastructure that enables RSCT components to authenticate the identity of other parties.
  • Topology Services subsystem. This RSCT component provides node and network failure detection on some cluster configurations.
  • Group Services subsystem. This RSCT component provides cross-node/process coordination on some cluster configurations.