Tarantella Administration Guide > Arrays, servers and load balancing > What is an array?

What is an array?

In Tarantella, an array is a collection of Tarantella servers that share configuration information.

Arrays have these benefits:

• Users and emulator sessions are load-balanced across the array. To scale to more users, simply add more Tarantella servers to the array.
• With more than one server, there's no single point of failure. You can decommission a server temporarily with the minimum of disruption to your users.
• Configuration information, including all the objects in your organizational hierarchy, is replicated to all array members. All array members have access to all information.

You can use Array Manager to add and remove servers from the array, to change the primary server, and to configure both array-wide and server-specific settings.

Array structure

An array contains:

• One primary server. This is the authoritative source for array-wide information, and maintains the definitive copy of the organizational hierarchy.
• Any number of secondary servers. Information is replicated to these servers by the primary server.

A single, "standalone" server is considered to be the primary server in an array with no secondary servers.

Tarantella servers in an array may run different operating systems. However, all the array members must run the same version of Tarantella.

Tarantella Enterprise 3 allows you to create an array of two Tarantella servers. You can increase the number of servers allowed in an array by adding an Extended Array license key. If you are using Tarantella Enterprise 3 EX, there is no restriction on the size of the array.