1. there are various kind of clusters: single system image clusters (oracle rac falls under this category); high performance cluster (oracle claims rac is high performance);load-balancing cluster (oracle rac does this); high availability clusters (rac is ha as well). 2. some one has to manage services (say, cluster file system, nfs, oracle instance, interface, disks, sendmail, dns, etc). There is a way to manage syslog across all nodes: here comes evmd of tru64 cluster or of oracle rac. 3. If you want to manage only oracle rac instances, yes, you have no choice but to deploy oracle clusterware. If your organization has already deployed clusters supporting non-oracle related services, then go with a clusterware that is certified to be compatible with oracle clusterware. > > Does anybody know what the thrid party cluseterware > from Veritas SUN and IBM HACMP over and above what has > already been offered by Oracle for free. > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l