Computer clusters can be used to provide highly available services or resources. The redundancy of multiple machines is used to guard against failures of many types.

This document will walk through the installation and setup of simple clusters using the Fedora distribution, version 17.

The clusters described here will use Pacemaker and Corosync to provide resource management and messaging. Required packages and modifications to their configuration files are described along with the use of the Pacemaker command line tool for generating the XML used for cluster control.

Pacemaker is a central component and provides the resource management required in these systems. This management includes detecting and recovering from the failure of various nodes, resources and services under its control.

When more in depth information is required and for real world usage, please refer to the Pacemaker Explained manual.