Highly available computing platform

• US 20070168690A1
• Filed: 11/18/2005
• Published: 07/19/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Ross, Alan
• Granted Patent: US 7,565,567 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0727 in a storage system, e.g. in a DASD or network based storage system drivers for digital recording or reproducing units G06F3/06; circuits for error detection or correction within digital recording or reproducing units G11B20/18; for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS], H04L67/1097
• 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 11/1484 involving virtual machines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2012 and using different communication protocols
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2094 Redundant storage or storage space G06F11/2056 takes precedence

Abstract

System resources can be monitored for error or failure. In the event of a failure, an availability module can fail the system over from the corrupt resource to a backup resource.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

detecting, with a heterogeneous resource manager that monitors multiple disparate resources on a computing platform, a failure of a monitored primary resource on the computing platform, the computing platform having the monitored primary resource and a secondary resource that acts as a backup to the primary resource; and

automatically failing over from the failed primary resource to the secondary resource in response to detecting the failure.

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein detecting the failure comprises determining a change in the status of the resource.

3. A method according to claim 1, wherein detecting the failure comprises detecting a loss of connectivity to the resource.

4. A method according to claim 1, wherein the primary and second resources comprise one of a storage device, a network interface, or an operating system.

5. A method according to claim 4, wherein the primary and second resources comprise an operating system, and wherein automatically failing over from the primary resource to the secondary resource comprises switching from a first virtual partition to a second virtual partition.

6. A method according to claim 5, further comprising:

generating a third virtual partition to act as a backup to the second partition; and

removing the first virtual partition.

7. A method according to claim 1, further comprising:

generating a tertiary resource to act as a backup to the secondary resource.

8. A method according to claim 1, further comprising:

performing a diagnostic check on the primary resource in response to detecting the failure to attempt to recover the primary resource;

wherein automatically failing over to the secondary resource occurs if performing the diagnostic check fails to recover the resource.

9. An article of manufacture comprising a machine-accessible medium having content to provide instructions, which when executed cause a machine to perform operations including:

detecting, with a heterogeneous resource manager that monitors multiple disparate resources on a computing platform, a failure of a monitored primary resource on the computing platform, the computing platform having the monitored primary resource and a secondary resource that acts as a backup to the primary resource; and

determining, with a resource manager that monitors multiple disparate types of resources on a mobile computing platform, that a primary resource of the mobile computing platform has an error condition;

performing an error recovery routine to restore the primary resource in response to determining the error condition; and

if performing the error recovery routine fails to restore the primary resource, automatically failing over to a backup resource.

10. An article of manufacture according to claim 9, wherein detecting the failure further comprises instructions for detecting one or more of an error state of the resource or a loss of connectivity to the resource.

11. An article of manufacture according to claim 9, wherein the primary and second resources comprise one of a storage device, a network interface, or an operating system.

12. An article of manufacture according to claim 9, the content further to provide instructions for:

generating a tertiary resource to act as a backup to the backup resource.

13. An article of manufacture according to claim 9, wherein the primary resource is a wireless network interface, and wherein failing over to the backup resource further comprises instructions for generating a software defined radio as the backup resource.

14. An apparatus comprising:

a computing platform having a primary and a secondary resource, the secondary resource to provide a backup for the primary resource, the primary and second resources to be one of multiple different resource types on the computing platform; and

a resource management module coupled to the computing platform to monitor the multiple different resource types on the computing platform, determine the primary resource has experienced an unrecoverable error, and switch the computing platform from the primary resource to the secondary resource in response to determining the unrecoverable error.

15. An apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the primary and second resources comprise storage devices, and wherein switching to the secondary resource comprises switching to a backup storage device.

16. An apparatus according to claim 14, the resource management module to further generate a tertiary resource to act as a backup to the secondary resource.

17. An apparatus according to claim 14, the resource management module to further indicate the error to a remote device via an out-of-band communication channel.

18. A system comprising:

a computing platform having a primary and a secondary resource, the secondary resource to provide a backup for the primary resource, the primary and second resources to be one of multiple different resource types on the computing platform;

a resource management module coupled to the computing platform to monitor the multiple different resource types on the computing platform, determine the primary resource has experienced an unrecoverable error, and switch the computing platform from the primary resource to the secondary resource in response to determining the unrecoverable error; and

a twisted pair interface port on the computing platform and coupled to the resource management module, to provide a wired connection having the out-of-band communication channel.

19. A system according to claim 18, the resource management module further to generate a tertiary resource to back up the secondary resource.

20. A system according to claim 18, wherein to determine the primary resource has experienced an unrecoverable error further comprising the resource management module to perform a recovery routine on the primary resource.