Depending on your platform, Oracle Solaris Cluster software supports the following configurations:
SPARC: Oracle Solaris Cluster software supports from one to 16 cluster nodes in a cluster. Different hardware configurations impose additional limits on the maximum number of nodes that you can configure in a cluster composed of SPARC-based systems. See Oracle Solaris Cluster Topologies in Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Concepts Guide for the supported configurations.
x86: Oracle Solaris Cluster software supports from one to eight cluster nodes in a cluster. Different hardware configurations impose additional limits on the maximum number of nodes that you can configure in a cluster composed of x86-based systems. See Oracle Solaris Cluster Topologies in Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Concepts Guide for the supported configurations.
All nodes in the cluster must have the same architecture. All nodes in the cluster must run the same version of the Oracle Solaris OS. Nodes in the same cluster must have the same OS and architecture, as well as similar processing, memory, and I/O capability, to enable failover to occur without significant degradation in performance. Because of the possibility of failover, every node must have enough excess capacity to support the workload of all nodes for which they are a backup or secondary.
Cluster nodes are generally attached to one or more multihost storage devices. Nodes that are not attached to multihost devices can use a cluster file system to access the data on multihost devices. For example, one scalable services configuration enables nodes to service requests without being directly attached to multihost devices.
In addition, nodes in parallel database configurations share concurrent access to all the disks.
See Multihost Devices in Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Concepts Guide for information about concurrent access to disks.
See Clustered Pair Topology in Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Concepts Guide and Clustered Pair Topology in Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.3 Concepts Guide for more information about parallel database configurations and scalable topology.
Public network adapters attach nodes to the public networks, providing client access to the cluster.
Cluster members communicate with the other nodes in the cluster through one or more physically independent networks. This set of physically independent networks is referred to as the cluster interconnect.
Every node in the cluster is aware when another node joins or leaves the cluster. Additionally, every node in the cluster is aware of the resources that are running locally as well as the resources that are running on the other cluster nodes.