Session failover management in a high-availability server cluster environment

• US 20070220302A1
• Filed: 02/28/2006
• Published: 09/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Pulito, Brian, Johnson, Mark, Segev, Uri, Yaffe, Dror, Perlman, Amir, Galvin, James, Lawwill, James, Reinharts, Yaron, Cline, Brian
• Application Number:
  US11/363,676
• Publication Number:
  US 20070220302A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2025 using centralised failover control functionality
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2035 without idle spare hardware
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2097 maintaining the standby controller/processing unit updated initialisation or re-synchronisation thereof G06F11/1658 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• 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

A system for session failover management in a server cluster environment, the system including one or more clusters, each cluster having one or more servers, each server having one or more partition, each partition identified by a partition ID and grouping one or more sessions, and a failover manager configured to detect the failure of any of the servers and effect the assignment any of the partitions on the failed server to another of the servers within the failed server'"'"'s cluster.

Claims

1. A system for session failover management in a server cluster environment, the system comprising:

one or more clusters, each cluster having one or more servers, each server having one or more partitions, each partition identified by a partition ID and grouping one or more sessions; and

a failover manager configured to

detect the failure of any of said servers and

effect the assignment any of said partitions on said failed server to another of said servers within said failed server'"'"'s cluster.

2. A system according to claim 1 wherein any of said servers to which a failed server partition is assigned is configured to activate any of said sessions within said failed server partition.

3. A system according to claim 1 and further comprising a server-partition mapper configured to maintain a mapping of each of said partitions to their servers.

4. A system according to claim 3 wherein any of said servers to which a failed server partition is assigned is configured to inform said server-partition mapper that it has taken over said failed server partition.

5. A system according to claim 3 and further comprising a proxy configured to

receive an incoming session-based protocol message,

identify to which of said partitions said message belongs,

consult said server-partition mapper to determine to which server said identified partition is mapped, and

forward said message to said mapped server.

6. A system according to claim 1 and further comprising a replication manager configured to replicate session objects, associated with any of said sessions on any of said servers within any of said clusters, to any other of said servers within said cluster.

7. A system according to claim 1 wherein said session is a SIP session.

8. A method for session failover management in a server cluster environment, the method comprising:

defining one or more clusters, each cluster having one or more servers, each server having one or more partitions, each partition identified by a partition ID and grouping one or more sessions;

detecting the failure of any of said servers; and

effecting the assignment any of said partitions on said failed server to another of said servers within said failed server'"'"'s cluster.

9. A method according to claim 8 and further comprising activating any of said sessions within said failed server partition on said server to which a failed server partition is assigned.

10. A method according to claim 8 and further comprising maintaining a mapping of each of said partitions to their servers.

11. A method according to claim 10 and further comprising updating said mapping to indicate the server to which a failed server partition is assigned.

12. A method according to claim 10 and further comprising:

receiving an incoming session-based protocol message;

identifying to which of said partitions said message belongs;

determining to which server said identified partition is mapped; and

forwarding said message to said mapped server.

13. A method according to claim 8 and further comprising replicating session objects, associated with any of said sessions on any of said servers within any of said clusters, to any other of said servers within said cluster.

14. A computer-implemented program embodied on a computer-readable medium, the computer program comprising:

a first code segment operative to define one or more clusters, each cluster having one or more servers, each server having one or more partitions, each partition identified by a partition ID and grouping one or more sessions;

a second code segment operative to detect the failure of any of said servers; and

a third code segment operative to effect the assignment any of said partitions on said failed server to another of said servers within said failed server'"'"'s cluster.