By clustering the servers, "they achieve a higher availability than any single one of them would achieve," Marowsky-Bree said.

So, not surprisingly, the Linux HA stack will include a lot of components that should aid in the clustering of servers. In addition to Linux, the software stack may include technologies such as the Corosync cluster engine, the Open Clustering Framework, the Linux Virtual Server, the Pacemaker resource manager, the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS), the Global File System (GFS) and others.

While many of these technologies are already mature, additional work remains to be done in assuring they all work together easily, Marowsky-Bree said.

The Foundation announced the group during the start of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, Wednesday in San Francisco. At the conference, the organization also of version 5.0 of its Carrier Grade Linux stack.

The IDG News Service