Establishing connections in a multi-tenant environment

• US 10,528,526 B2
• Filed: 09/02/2015
• Issued: 01/07/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 03/19/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bain, Peter D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Vital, Pierre M
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ho, Andrew N
• Application Number:
  US14/842,926
• Publication Number:
  US 20160274956A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,588 Days
• Field of Search: 707622
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/178 Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2343 Locking methods, e.g. distributed locking or locking implementation details
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/52 Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication

Abstract

A method, executed by a computer, for inter-process communication in a multi-tenant environment includes creating an advertisement file for each tenant, determining that a semaphore is greater than zero, searching for a response file, and decrementing the semaphore. Detecting the response file may enable the specific tenant to establish a connection with an attachment process, and as a result, the semaphore may be reset to a value of zero. In one embodiment, a plurality of synchronization files are locked prior to incrementing the semaphore and unlocked in response to detecting the response file. Another method includes counting the targets to provide a target count, incrementing a semaphore to the target count, creating a response file, and establishing a connection with the specific target. A computer program product and computer system corresponding to the methods are also disclosed herein.

Claims

1. A method for inter-process communication in a multi-tenant environment, the method comprising:

creating an advertisement file for each tenant of a plurality of tenants;

locking a plurality of synchronization files prior to incrementing a semaphore, wherein the plurality of synchronization files correspond to the plurality of tenants, and wherein locking the plurality of synchronization files ensure that the semaphore is only decremented once per tenant;

incrementing the semaphore by an integer equal to a target count, wherein the target count is calculated by adding the advertisement files for each tenant of the plurality of tenants to an advertisement file for a daemon;

responsive to a determination that the semaphore for the plurality of tenants is greater than zero, searching for a response file corresponding to a specific tenant, wherein the response file includes metadata related to an information channel for communication with the specific tenant and information depicting a communication protocol used corresponding to the specific tenant;

decrementing the semaphore, wherein the daemon decrements the semaphore in which the specific tenant is operating in the daemon once for each search loop;

detecting the response file using the metadata related to the information channel to determine that the detected response file corresponds to the specific tenant;

responsive to detecting the response file, unlocking the plurality of synchronization files;

responsive to detecting the response file, resetting the semaphore to a value of zero; and

responsive to detecting the response file, establishing a connection, wherein the connection comprises an encrypted communication channel between the specific tenant and the attachment process mediated by the daemon, and wherein the connection is established at a pre-determined time and is terminated after a pre-determined duration.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the metadata and the information depicting a communication protocol are used in generating instructions enabling an attachment process to establish the connection with the specific tenant.