A cluster is a group or collection of items with similar or different characteristics. The term "cluster" can refer to different things depending on the context:
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Computer Cluster: A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Each node in a computer cluster is set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and availability over that of a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability.
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Cloud Cluster: In cloud computing, a cluster is a group of nodes hosted on virtual machines and connected within a virtual private cloud. Using the cloud allows for much of the overhead involved in managing a cluster to be abstracted away, allowing developers to focus on their applications.
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Data Clustering: Clustering is a technique used in machine learning to group unlabeled examples. Clustering relies on unsupervised machine learning, and the examples are grouped based on their similarity to each other. Clustering has a myriad of uses in a variety of industries, including market segmentation, social network analysis, search result grouping, medical imaging, image segmentation, and anomaly detection.
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Nodes and Clusters in Kubernetes: In Kubernetes, nodes and clusters are the hardware that carries the application deployments. Nodes are the individual train cars, while clusters are the body of the train, a connection of all these cars that form the train itself. The cluster is the foundation of the Kubernetes objects representing all of your containerized applications. Applications run on top of a cluster, guided by the cluster master node.
In summary, a cluster is a group or collection of items with similar or different characteristics, and the term can refer to different things depending on the context.
