Advantages and Disadvantages of Clustering

The main advantage of a clustered solution is automatic recovery from failure, that is, recovery without user intervention. Disadvantages of clustering are complexity and inability to recover from database corruption.

In a clustered environment, the cluster uses the same IP address for Directory Server and Directory Proxy Server, regardless of which cluster node is actually running the service. That is, the IP address is transparent to the client application. In a replicated environment, each machine in the topology has its own IP address. In this case, Directory Proxy Server can be used to provide a single point of access to the directory topology. The replication topology is therefore effectively hidden from client applications. To increase this transparency, Directory Proxy Server can be configured to follow referrals and search references automatically. Directory Proxy Server also provides load balancing and the ability to switch to another machine when one fails.