Single Instance of Backend - Mailing list pgsql-general

I have heard several mentions of the requirements for single postmaster. Is a postmaster 'the backend'? Maybe I could
definewhat I think is the current situation first: 


client1    client2     client3    ....
  |           |           |         |
  +-----------+-----------+---------+
  |
  V
Postmaster
  |
  V
OperSys
  |
  V
Disks

Is this correct? Is this because of MVCC? How many other DB's are using MVCC?

To make clustering work, and be as redundant as possible, how do the clustering solutions work for:

Postgres?

Oracle?

DB2?

Other Real DB's?