WEB SERVER CONTENT REPLICATION

• US 20030041094A1
• Filed: 08/19/1999
• Published: 02/27/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: DEBETTENCOURT, JASON, YAMANE, STANLEY, LARA, MARCO
• Granted Patent: US 6,976,093 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1734 Details of monitoring file system events, e.g. by the use of hooks, filter drivers, logs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1844 Management specifically adapted to replicated file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1873 Versioning file systems, temporal file systems, e.g. file system supporting different historic versions of files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/88 Monitoring involving counting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/024 using relational databases for representation of network management data, e.g. managing via structured query language [SQL]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5083 wherein the managed service relates to web hosting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1027 Persistence of sessions during load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 : using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1031 : Controlling of the operation of servers by a load balancer, e.g. adding or removing servers that serve requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1034 : Reaction to server failures by a load balancer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 : Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/56 : Provisioning of proxy services store-and-forward switching systems in data switching networks H04L12/54
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 : Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 : Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 : Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 : Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users

Abstract

This invention relates to managing multiple web servers, and more particularly to a web service system and method that allows a system operator to distribute content to each web server in the web service system. In one embodiment, a method for replicating changes in a source file set on a destination file system includes identifying changes in a source file set, storing the identified changes in a modification list, and transmitting the modification list to an agent having access to a destination file system. In another embodiment, a method for replicating changes in a source file set on a destination file system includes identifying changes in a source file set, storing the identified changes in a modification list, and transmitting the modification list to a plurality of web servers. In another embodiment, a web service system includes a manager for managing the web service system, a host comprising a web server for receiving web page requests and an agent in communication with the manager, and a content distributor for providing content changes to the host. In another embodiment, a content distributor includes an identification module for identifying changes in a source file set, a modification list for storing identified changes, and a transmitter for transmitting the modification list to an agent having access to a destination file system.

Claims

1. A method for replicating changes in a source file set on a destination file system, comprising the steps of.

(a) identifying changes in a source file set;

(b) storing the identified changes in a modification list; and

(c) transmitting the modification list to an agent having access to a destination file system.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

(d) transmitting the changed files to the agent having access to the destination file system.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising the step of:

(e) installing the changed files on the destination file system.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying step comprises the steps of:

inspecting a set of files; and

comparing the set of files to an earlier-recorded set.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying step comprises the steps of:

installing a device driver to perform file operations; and

recording, by the device driver, changes to the source file set.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying step comprises:

receiving a manifest describing changes to the source file set.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein the comparing step comprises comparing a file attribute to the file attribute of the earlier-recorded set.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the file attribute comprises at least one attribute chosen from the set of file size, file permissions, file ownership, modification time, and a hash of the file.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising, before the identifying step, the step of calling a script.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising, before the transmitting step, the step of calling a script.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising, after the transmitting step, the step of calling a script.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of determining whether the transmitting step has successfully completed, and wherein the calling step occurs after the determining step.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of calling a script occurs after the success of the transmission is known.

14. A method for replicating changes in a source file set on a destination file system, comprising the steps of:

(a) identifying changes in a source file set;

(b) storing the identified changes in a modification list; and

(c) transmitting the modification list to a plurality of web servers.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the transmitting step comprises multicasting.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the identifying step comprises the steps of:

inspecting a set of files; and

comparing the set of files to an earlier-recorded set.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the comparing step comprises comparing a file attribute to the file attribute of the earlier-recorded set.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the file attribute comprises at least one attribute chosen from the set of file size, file permissions, file ownership, modification time, and a hash of the file.

19. A web service system, comprising:

a manager for managing the web service system;

a host comprising a web server for receiving web page requests and an agent in communication with the manager; and

a content distributor for providing content changes to the host.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a traffic manager for directing web page requests to the web server.

21. The system of claim 19, wherein the content distributor comprises:

(a) an identification module for identifying changes in a source file set;

(b) a modification list for storing identified changes; and

(c) a transmitter for transmitting the modification list to an agent having access to a destination file system.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising a transmitter for transmitting the changed files to the agent.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the agent comprises an installer for installed the changed files on the destination file system.

24. A content distributor, comprising:

(a) an identification module for identifying changes in a source file set;

(b) a modification list for storing identified changes; and

(c) a transmitter for transmitting the modification list to an agent having access to a destination file system.

25. The content distributor of claim 24, further comprising a transmitter for transmitting the changed files to the agent.