System and method for application monitoring and automatic disaster recovery for high-availability

• US 20040158766A1
• Filed: 09/09/2003
• Published: 08/12/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: MessageOne, Inc. (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Dell Marketing USA LP
• Inventors: Liccione, John, Jones, Kelly M.
• Granted Patent: US 7,426,652 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2023 Failover techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning

Abstract

Stable and automated recovery of an application executing on a primary computer system by transitioning to a secondary computer system is provided. Intelligent agents installed on a primary client server allow the primary environment to be replicated on a host, secondary environment. This creates continuous availability of applications executing on the primary system via the mirrored host environment. Every transaction on the client environment (e.g., every piece of data) is replicated in real-time on the host environment. A simple mechanism (e.g., a button) is provided to allow access to the secondary environment thereby switching over from the client environment to the host environment in the case of, with respect to the primary environment, a disaster, a need to perform maintenance, system failure and the like.

Claims

1. An application monitoring and disaster recovery management system, comprising:

a primary computing environment, including a primary server executing an application;

a secondary computing environment, including a secondary server capable of executing said application;

a management server, executing a monitoring and management server module, that is in communications with said primary server and said secondary server;

a graphical user interface, in communications with said monitoring and management server module, capable of allowing a user to a perform a failure switch-over from said primary computing environment to said secondary computing environment for said application in a single action;

whereby said system allows for disaster recovery and fault tolerance, and limits computing down-time experienced by end-users of said primary computing environment.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a first plurality of intelligent agents distributed within said primary computing environment, wherein each of said first plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to said application executing on said primary server.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein each of said first plurality of intelligent agents are in communications with said monitoring and management server module, and said graphical user interface is capable of displaying the metric corresponding to each of said first plurality of intelligent agents.

4. The system of claim 3, further comprising:

a second plurality of intelligent agents distributed within said secondary computing environment, wherein;

each of said second plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to a subsystem within said secondary computing environment;

each of said second plurality of intelligent agents are in communications with said monitoring and management server module; and

said graphical user interface is capable of displaying the metric corresponding to each of said second plurality of intelligent agents.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a primary data repository located within said primary computing environment and accessible by said primary server;

a secondary data repository located within said secondary computing environment and accessible by said secondary server; and

means for synchronizing data stored in said primary data repository and said secondary data repository in real time as new data are written to said primary data repository as said application executes.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein said means for synchronizing data comprises a communications link from said primary server to said secondary server.

7. The system of claim 5, further comprising:

a plurality of archival data stores, each accessible by said secondary data repository, wherein each of said plurality of archival data stores is capable of storing a different point-in-time level snapshot of data stored in said secondary data repository.

8. The system of claim 5, further comprising:

a plurality of intelligent agents distributed within said primary computing environment, wherein each of said plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to said primary data repository.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein each of said plurality of intelligent agents are in communications with said monitoring and management server module;

and said graphical user interface is capable of displaying the metric corresponding to each of said plurality of intelligent agents.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein said graphical user interface is further capable of allowing a user to perform a switch-back from said secondary computing environment to said primary computing environment for said application in a single action.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein said single action is a button click by the user on said graphical user interface.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein said primary computing environment and said secondary computing environment are geographically dispersed.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein said primary and secondary computing environments, said management server and said graphical user interface are interconnected over at least a portion of the global, public Internet.

14. A method for providing a user with an application monitoring and disaster recovery management tool, comprising the steps of:

deploying a first plurality of intelligent agents within a primary computing environment, said primary computing environment including a primary server executing an application, and wherein each of said first plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to said application;

monitoring, by a monitoring and management server module executing on a management server, a plurality of states, each of said plurality of states being rendered by one of said first plurality of intelligent agents;

displaying to the user, via a graphical user interface in communications with said monitoring and management server module, said plurality of states; and

performing a failure switch-over from said primary computing environment to a secondary computing environment having a secondary server capable of executing said application in response to a first input received from the user via said graphical interface;

whereby said method allows for disaster recovery and fault tolerance, and limits computing down-time experienced by end users of said primary computing environment.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein said application is an electronic mail application, and said failure switch-over comprises the step of temporarily changing the hostname of said secondary server to the hostname of said primary server.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein said primary computing environment and said secondary computing environment are geographically dispersed.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein said first input is received by said monitoring and management server module as a result of a button click by the user on said graphical user interface.

18. The method of claim 14, further comprising the step of:

performing a switch-back from said secondary computing environment to said primary computing environment in response to a second input received from the user via said graphical interface.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein said second input is received by said monitoring and management server module and as a result of a button click by the user on said graphical user interface.

20. The method of claim 14, further comprising the steps of:

deploying a second plurality of intelligent agents within said secondary computing environment, wherein each of said second plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to a subsystem within said secondary computing environment;

monitoring, by said monitoring and management server module, a second plurality of states, each of said second plurality of states being rendered by one of said second plurality of intelligent agents; and

displaying to the user, via said graphical user interface, said second plurality of states.

21. The method of claim 14, further comprising the step of:

synchronizing data stored in a primary data repository accessible to said primary server within said primary computing environment and a secondary data repository accessible to said secondary server within said secondary computing environment in real time as new data are written to said primary data repository as said application executes.

22. The method of claim 19, further comprising the step of:

archiving data from said secondary data repository to one of a plurality of archival data stores in response to a second input received from the user via said graphical interface, wherein each of said plurality of archival data stores contains a different point-in-time level snapshot of data stored in said secondary data repository.

23. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having control logic stored therein for causing a computer to provide a user with an application monitoring and disaster recovery management tool, said control logic comprising:

first computer readable program code means for causing the computer to deploy a plurality of intelligent agents within a primary computing environment, said primary computing environment including a primary server executing an application, and wherein each of said plurality of intelligent agents monitors a metric related to said application;

second computer readable program code means for causing the computer to monitor a plurality of states, each of said plurality of states being rendered by one of said plurality of intelligent agents;

third computer readable program code means for causing the computer to display to the user, via a graphical user interface, said plurality of states; and

fourth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to perform a failure switch-over from said primary computing environment to a secondary computing environment having a secondary server capable of executing said application in response to an input received from the user via said graphical interface.

24. The computer program product of claim 23, wherein said application is an electronic mail application, and further comprising:

fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to temporarily change the hostname of said secondary server to the hostname of said primary server.

25. The computer program product of claim 23, wherein said first computer readable program code means comprises:

fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to query said application once every pre-determined time period in order for each said plurality of intelligent agents to monitor said corresponding metric related to said application.