Dan Birchall

Linux Web Server Clusters Emerge (excerpt) David Orenstein,  ComputerWorld , August 16 1999 ...Brisbane, Calif.-based TurboLinux Inc. is bringing high-availability cluster traits like load balancing and fail-over to basic Web serving, said Dan Birchall, a beta tester of the company's TurboCluster technology at Web hoster Digital Facilities Management Inc. in Haddonfield, N.J. Birchall implemented a cluster that he said has performed well and cost about $7,500 compared with a $75,000 commercial Unix cluster.

Linux To Gain Features For Both Notebooks And Servers (Excerpt) Mitch Wagner, InternetWeek , August 11 1999 ...Vendors at LinuxWorld introduced add-ons to Linux. Among these was TurboLinux, which introduced its own support for Linux clustering. Any TCP/IP application can be clustered using TurboCluster software by running one copy of the application of each node of a Linux cluster, with TurboCluster handling load-balancing and failover of nodes, according to the company. No theoretical limit exists for the number of nodes that can be managed; the application has been tested with up to 20 nodes. Web hosting company Digital Facilities Management uses the software on a two-node cluster, and the company is pleased with the costs savings compared with a Unix system, said Dan Birchall, a consultant to Digital Facilities Management. "It gives us complete redundancy and does it for a tenth of the price of anyone else on the Unix end of things," Birchall said. The com