Make a server out of multiple computers?

Question

I have two Power Mac G5 computers both the Dual Core 2.0GHz model and I want to connect them together in some way to reduce the strain on one of them. The CPU usage is getting higher lately due to many clients connecting to the one computer so I want to use the second computer's processor to make the server faster. Is this possible? Or is their any other way of using a second server to reduce strain on the first?

Answer 1

Yes you can it requires: software like a operating system for serving. 2. it requires a controller card of some kind( proper hardware) installed in the pci bridge. Last but not least it requires a software program.

This is not a new Idea. Vertual reality used to take multiple computers to create. There is way to do that.

Answer 2

Not easily.

You can split functions between the two, e.g. put a database server on one and webserver on the other, or you can run the same software on each and do load balancing.

Simplistically you can give them the same DNS A record and run a stateless webserver on both, where it doesn't matter which one serves the content. Or something more complex where the router sends packets to either one or the other on a round-robin basis.

Since they are separate computers with no shared memory, you can't do the kind of seamless sharing that you can get with multiple cores.

Answer 3

I think that used to be called parallel computing. Just like a computer can use multiple cpu cores for multiple threads, multiple computers can be set up to similarly cooperate. It helps to have fast network connections between the computers. I know you can do that in Linux, but I have never done it.



Now it seems to be called cloud computing.