Genders is a static cluster configuration database
used for cluster configuration management. It is
used by a variety of tools and scripts for
management of large clusters. The genders database
is accessed by every node in a cluster, either
through a networked file system or by replicating
the database on every node of the cluster. The
database describes the layout and configuration of
the cluster so that tools and scripts can sense
the variations of cluster nodes. By abstracting
this information into a plain text file, it
becomes possible to change the configuration of a
cluster by modifying only one file.
