Enterprise server version migration through identity preservation

• US 20070143373A1
• Filed: 08/07/2006
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Mimosa Systems Incorporated (Iron Mountain Incorporated)
• Inventors: Ravi, T.M., D'Souza, Roy
• Granted Patent: US 7,917,475 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/214 Database migration support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/252 between a Database Management System and a front-end application

Abstract

Systems and methods are described for service availability that provides automated recovery of server service in a timely and application intelligent manner, maintaining application consistency and integrity, while preserving server identity. The systems and methods, referred to herein as a Service Preservation System (SPS), manage complete recovery of server data and preserve continuity of server service, reestablishing user access to server(s) after an event or disaster in which in which primary or other server(s) fail. The failures, disasters, and losses referred to herein can be at many levels and include, but are not limited to, accidental deletion of an item, loss of an entire mailbox, loss of an entire disk drive, loss of an entire server, and/or loss of an entire server site.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

continuously shadowing one or more live servers, the live servers including data that provides services to a plurality of clients;

generating and maintaining a replica of the data during the shadowing; and

automatically transferring the replica of the data to one or more standby servers in response to an event of the one or more standby servers, wherein the event comprises a migration event that includes migration from a first version of at least one application hosted by the live servers to a second version of the application.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising activating the standby servers hosting the replica of the data.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising evaluating operation of the activated standby servers under the second version.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising returning the activated standby servers to a standby state.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising providing the services to the clients using the activated standby servers, wherein the activated standby servers are hosting the replica of the data.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises preserving continuity of the services by automatically re-establishing access to the services by the clients.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises restarting services corresponding to the data on the standby server.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises rebinding mailboxes in a directory service to the standby server.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises re-homing the clients.

10. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing the services to the clients using the one or more live servers.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the live servers and the standby servers is identified and addressed independently.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the replica includes one or more portions of the data of the live servers.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the replica of the data is stored on at least one near-line server during the shadowing.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the near-line server.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the shadowing generates and maintains the replica of the data in near real-time on the near-line server, wherein the shadowing maintains complete integrity and consistency of the data.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a near-line server co-located with the standby servers.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the standby servers are located at one or more of a geographic location of the live servers and a different geographic location from the live servers.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a first near-line server co-located with the live servers at a first site and a second near-line server located at a second site.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the replica of the data is stored on the first near-line server during the shadowing.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising replicating the replica from the first near-line server to the second near-line server.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the first near-line server.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the second near-line server.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a first near-line server co-located with the live servers at a first site and a second near-line server co-located with the standby servers at a second site.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the replica of the data is stored on the first near-line server during the shadowing.

25. The method of claim 24, further comprising replicating the replica from the first near-line server to the second near-line server.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the first near-line server.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the second near-line server.

28. The method of claim 1, wherein the live servers include one or more messaging and collaboration servers.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein the data includes one or more of application data, databases, storage groups, mailbox data, and server data.

30. The method of claim 1, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes generating at least one data surrogate using information of the data and a plurality of data changes of the data received from the one or more live servers.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising updating the at least one data surrogate using information of at least one additional data change received from the one or more live servers, wherein the updating is performed at least one of upon receipt of the at least one additional data change, subsequent to receipt of a plurality of additional data changes, and following processing operations on the at least one additional data change.

32. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more live servers include one or more of local servers, remote servers, database servers, messaging servers, electronic mail servers, instant messaging servers, voice-over Internet Protocol servers, collaboration servers, portals, customer relationship management (CRM) servers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) servers, business-to-business servers, and content management servers.

33. The method of claim 1, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes one or more of host-based replication of the data on the standby servers and storage-based replication of the data on the standby servers.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein host-based replication comprises:

writing data of the live servers to local storage of the live server; and

writing data of the live servers to remote storage of the standby server.

35. The method of claim 33, wherein storage-based replication comprises writing data of the live servers to local storage of the live server;

and

replicating data of the local storage of the live server to remote storage of the standby server.

36. The method of claim 1, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes writing data of the plurality of clients to components of a live server and to components of a standby server.

37. The method of claim 1, wherein the first version is an original version of the application and the second version is a new version of the application.

38. The method of claim 1, wherein the first version is a new version of the application and the second version is an original version of the application.

39. A method comprising:

continuously shadowing one or more live servers, the live servers including data that provides services to a plurality of clients;

generating and maintaining a replica of the data during the shadowing; and

automatically propagating the replica of the data to one or more standby servers in response to an event of the one or more standby servers, wherein the event comprises one or more of a migration event and a drill event.

40. The method of claim 39, wherein the migration event includes migration from a first version of at least one application hosted by the live servers to a second version of the application.

41. The method of claim 40, wherein the first version is an original version of the application and the second version is a new version of the application.

42. The method of claim 40, wherein the first version is a new version of the application and the second version is an original version of the application.

43. The method of claim 39, wherein the drill event comprises:

activating the standby servers hosting the replica of the data; and

evaluating operation of the activated standby servers.

44. The method of claim 43, further comprising returning the activated standby servers to a standby state.

45. The method of claim 39, further comprising providing the services to the clients using the activated standby servers, wherein the activated standby servers are hosting the replica of the data.

46. The method of claim 45, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises preserving continuity of the services by automatically re-establishing access to the services by the clients.

47. The method of claim 45, wherein providing the services to the clients with the activated standby servers comprises one or more of restarting services corresponding to the data on the standby server, rebinding mailboxes in a directory service to the standby server, and re-homing the clients.

48. The method of claim 45, further comprising providing the services to the clients using the one or more live servers.

49. The method of claim 39, wherein each of the live servers and the standby servers is identified and addressed independently.

50. The method of claim 39, wherein the replica includes one or more portions of the data of the live servers.

51. The method of claim 39, wherein the replica of the data is stored on at least one near-line server during the shadowing.

52. The method of claim 51, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the near-line server.

53. The method of claim 51, wherein the shadowing generates and maintains the replica of the data in near real-time on the near-line server, wherein the shadowing maintains complete integrity and consistency of the data.

54. The method of claim 39, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a first near-line server and a second near-line server.

55. The method of claim 54, further comprising storing the replica of the data on the first near-line server during the shadowing and replicating the replica from the first near-line server to the second near-line server.

56. The method of claim 55, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from one or more of the first near-line server and the second near-line server.

57. The method of claim 39, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes generating at least one data surrogate using information of the data and a plurality of data changes of the data received from the one or more live servers.

58. Computer readable medium including executable instructions which, when executed in a processing system, supports server version migration by:

continuously shadowing one or more live servers, the live servers including data that provides services to a plurality of clients;

generating and maintaining a replica of the data during the shadowing; and

automatically propagating the replica of the data to one or more standby servers in response to an event of the one or more standby servers, wherein the event comprises one or more of a migration event and a drill event.