I think this will answer your questions. If it does not, let me know and I will try as best I can to answer. WARNING: SAN's requie Fibre Channel, and that stuff is EXPENSIVE! But once you go Fibre (remember, I have been out of this business for four years now, so I am not up to the state of the art,) you will never go back. WARNING: EliteTrader's requirements are greater than the stateless http that most of these clusters serve. Since there are database demands, I believe that the file system must also be distributable, or at least have a database that is aware of a cluster environment. I do not know what ET uses, probably MSSQL, which I am not too familiar with. Oracle can definetly handle it, and so can DB2...I don't know if MySQL or Postgress can handle it... http://www.polyserve.com/pdf/PMxS-ApacheAB_1018.pdf Microsoft has their own (inferior) versions: http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/whitepapers/cluster.asp BTW, iSCSI is an alternative that people are super excited about that may replace Fibre Channel. http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci750136,00.html nitro
Nitro, Thanks for the info. To answer your question about MySQL, the answer is: http://www.mysql.com/press/user_stories/ap.html