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cluster
(redirected from clusters)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.04 sec.
cluster, in astronomy: see star cluster star cluster, a group of stars near each other in space and resembling each other in certain characteristics that suggest a common origin for the group. Stars in the same cluster move at the same rate and in the same direction.
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; galaxy galaxy, large aggregation of stars , gas, and dust, typically containing billions of stars. Recognition that galaxies are independent star systems outside the Milky Way came from a study of the Andromeda Galaxy (1926–29) by Edwin P.
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.

cluster

(1) Two or more systems working together. See clustering.

(2) Also called an "allocation unit" or "file allocation unit," it is some number of disk sectors that are treated as a unit. A cluster is the smallest unit of storage the operating system's file system can manage. That means if a 1KB file is stored in a system with a 32KB cluster (see table below), the 1KB file takes up 32KB of disk space. Following are the cluster sizes for the FAT file systems on Windows/DOS computers. See FAT, FAT32 and lost cluster.

                       FAT16
     Disk Size         Cluster size

        0-128MB         2KB
      128-256MB         4KB
      256-512MB         8KB
    512MB-1GB          16KB
        1-2GB          32KB

                       FAT32
    Disk Size          Cluster size

    512MB-8GB           4KB
        8-16GB          8KB
       16-32GB         16KB
       32GB+           32KB


cluster
1. Astronomy an aggregation of stars or galaxies moving together through space
2. Chem
a. a chemical compound or molecule containing groups of metal atoms joined by metal-to-metal bonds
b. the group of linked metal atoms present

cluster [′kləs·tər]
(astronomy)
(computer science)
In a clustered file, one of the classes into which records with similar sets of content identifiers are grouped.
A grouping of hardware devices in a distributed processing system.
A group of disk sectors that is treated as a single entity by the operating system
(engineering)
A pyrotechnic signal consisting of a group of stars or fireballs.
A grouping of rocket motors fastened together.
(ordnance)
A collection of small bombs held together by an adapter for dropping.

1.(architecture)cluster - Multiple servers providing the same service. The term may imply resilience to failure and/or some kind of load balancing between the servers. Compare RAIS.
2.(file system)cluster - An elementary unit of allocation of a disk made up of one or more physical blocks.

A file is made up of a whole number of possibly non-contiguous clusters. The cluster size is a tradeoff between space efficiency (the bigger is the cluster, the bigger is on the average the wasted space at the end of each file) and the length of the FAT.


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