Shared-disk architecture

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Shared-disk architecture" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A shared-disk architecture (SD) is a distributed computing architecture in which the nodes share same disk devices but each node has its own private memory.^[1] The disks have active nodes which all share memory in case of any failures.^[2] In this architecture, the disks are accessible from all the cluster nodes. This architecture has quick adaptability to the changing workloads.^[3] It uses robust optimization techniques. Multiple processors can access all disks directly via intercommunication network and every processor has local memory.

It contrasts with shared-nothing architecture, in which all nodes have sole access to distinct disks,^[4] and with shared-memory, in which they also share memory.

Shared-disk has two advantages over Shared-memory. Firstly, each processor has its own memory, the memory bus is not a bottleneck; secondly, the system offers a simple way to provide a degree of fault tolerance.