What Is Tungsten Manager?

The Tungsten Manager is a flexible cluster manager designed to administer JMX-enabled services and operating system processes that constitute resources in the cluster.  Tungsten Manager solves a critical problem in clusters, namely managing all cluster resources as a single unit.  The Tungsten Manager is built on a firm foundation of group communications, which handles issues like broadcast message delivery and failure detection.

Managers have the following specialized capabilities designed to enable efficient administration:

• Automatic discovery of manager instances
• Framework for implementing resource management logic
• Protocol for addressing commands to resources
• Reliable broadcast command delivery to all manager instances
• Predictable failure handling
• JMX client interface to issue issue commands to the cluster

The following diagram illustrates the manager architecture.

Resource handlers are implemented using a simple extension model based on a Handler interface.  Handlers contain logic to implement management operations.  The Tungsten Manager provides default handlers, including generic handlers to manage JMX-enabled services.