Progressive deployment and maintenance of applications on a set of peer nodes

• US 20060259594A1
• Filed: 05/16/2005
• Published: 11/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Manglik, Gaurav, Paliwal, Bharat, Jerath, Nitin
• Granted Patent: US 7,698,391 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/220
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1044 Group management mechanisms management of multicast group membership H04L12/185; reconfiguring of node membership in a computing system to eliminate errors G06F11/1425
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

An application deployment architecture provides the capability to independently invoke different phases of an operation associated with an application, thereby progressively deploying the application across a network of peer nodes and providing fault tolerance. Therefore, applications are easier to deploy on the network of nodes, the deployment process is less error prone, and remediation of deployment errors is simpler than with prior approaches. Tasks constituent to phases of a deployment process are schedulable rather than completely automated and outside the control of the administrator, and are schedulable on a subset of the nodes rather than only on the entire network of nodes.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for progressively provisioning a set of nodes in a computing system in which processing is distributed across the set of nodes, the method comprising:

configuring the computing system by identifying, to each of the nodes in the set, which nodes are in the set, and specifying, to each of the nodes in the set, that the nodes in the set operate as peers in the computing system;

performing, on a first subset of the nodes, an operation associated with a software application, wherein the first subset is less than the entire set of nodes; and

without reconfiguring the computing system, performing, on a second subset of the set of nodes, the operation associated with the software application, wherein the second subset is less than the entire set of nodes and is a different subset of nodes than the first subset of nodes.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein configuring, performing the operation on the first subset of nodes, and performing the operation on the second subset of nodes are performed from a single node.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein performing an operation on a first subset of nodes includes:

copying application files to a first node of the first subset of nodes;

performing one or more actions on the application files on the first node;

indicating in an inventory associated with the system, that the application files are installed on the first node;

after updating the inventory, copying the application files to a second node of the first subset of nodes, wherein the second node is a different node than the first node;

performing one or more actions on the application files on the second node; and

indicating in the inventory that the application files are installed on the second node.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

adding a new node to the system;

copying the application files to the new node;

performing one or more actions on the application files on the new node; and

indicating in the inventory that the application files are installed on the new node; and

updating a node list to indicate to the first, second and new nodes that the first, second, and new nodes are peers in the computing system.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein performing an operation on a first subset of nodes includes:

copying one or more application files to a first node of the first subset of nodes;

separately from copying, performing one or more actions on at least one of the one or more application files on the first node;

updating an inventory that corresponds to the set of nodes to indicate that the one or more application files are installed on the first node;

in response to a failure associated with copying the one or more application files to a second node of the first subset of nodes or with performing one or more actions on the one or more application files on the second node,

identifying at what point in performance of the operation the failure occurred; and

restarting performance of the operation on the second node at the point at which the operation failure occurred, without recopying the application files that were copied before the failure.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

reporting (a) that the one or more application files are installed on the first node, and

(b) that a failure occurred in copying, or in performing one or more actions on, the one or more application files on the second node.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the operation includes performing an operation from a set of operations consisting of an application install operation, an application update operation, an application patch operation, and an application uninstall operation.

8. The method of claim 1,

wherein performing the operation on the first subset of nodes includes:

disabling the first subset of nodes;

updating the application on the first subset of nodes;

wherein performing the operation on the second subset of nodes includes, after updating the application on the first subset of nodes;

disabling the second subset of nodes;

updating the application on the second subset of nodes; and

enabling the first and second subsets of nodes.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the second subset of nodes consists of only one node.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing system includes a set of database servers that have shared access to data in a database.

11. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 1.

12. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 2.

13. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 3.

14. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 4.

15. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 5.

16. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 6.

17. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 7.

18. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 8.

19. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 9.

20. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 10.

21. A computer-implemented method for progressively provisioning a set of nodes in a computing system in which processing is distributed across the set of nodes, the method comprising:

copying application files to a first node of the set of nodes;

performing one or more actions on the application files on the first node;

indicating in an inventory associated with the computing system, that the application files are installed on the first node;

after copying the files to the first node, performing the one or more actions on the files on the first node, and indicating in the inventory that the files are installed on the first node,

copying the application files to a second node of the set of nodes, wherein the second node is a different node than the first node;

performing one or more actions on the application files on the second node;

indicating in the inventory that the application files are installed on the second node; and

indicating to the first and second nodes that the first and second nodes are peers in the computing system.

22. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 21.