Cluster management, although based on many of the same procedures and practices used to manage individual machines, is strongly influenced by the unique challenges derived from administering a group of machines that need to operate as a single entity for the application and user.
Cluster management is fundamentally about keeping a machine running. For cluster administrators to do this effectively they must use a set of tools and techniques that operate at the cluster level. In this chapter we have discussed both basic system administration tools and the techniques available to administrators to help them effectively manage the cluster at the cluster level.