HIGH AVAILABILITY CONFERENCING

• US 20080077665A1
• Filed: 09/22/2006
• Published: 03/27/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rao, Deepak P., Sekaran, Dhigha, Narayanan, Sankaran
• Granted Patent: US 8,150,917 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1827 Network arrangements for conference optimisation or adaptation

Abstract

A method, system, and architecture for providing a conference system that effectively achieves high availability conferencing is provided. The conference system architecture provides a conference system that comprises a set of stateless conference servers and a shared conference store to provide highly available conferencing to its users. The conference servers serve (host) conferences (meetings) that allow users to conduct distributed conferences. Each conference server generally performs conference provisioning operations and conference control operations. The shared conference store provides for the storage of conference state information, thus allowing the conference servers in the conference server pool to be stateless by maintaining conference state information on the shared conference store. A stateless conference server may also locally maintain, for example, in cache memory, some of the conference state information that is maintained on the shared conference store.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for providing highly available conferencing services, the method comprising:

providing a conference server pool comprising a plurality of conference servers;

receiving at a first conference server in the conference server pool from a first client a request to join a conference;

joining by the first conference server the first client to the conference based upon conference state information for the conference maintained on a shared conference store; and

during the conference, updating by the first conference server the conference state information for the conference maintained on the shared conference store.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein updating by the first conference server the conference state information for the conference maintained on the shared conference store comprises updating information regarding the first client.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the information regarding the first client is received from a conference server pool load balancer.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising, during the conference, updating by a second conference server in the conference server pool the conference state information for the conference maintained on the shared conference store.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein updating by the second conference server the conference state information for the conference maintained on the shared conference store comprises updating information regarding the first client.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the information regarding the first client is received from a conference server pool load balancer.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

sending from the first conference server to a pool of multipoint control unit factories a request for a multipoint control unit factory;

receiving at the first conference server an indication of a multipoint control unit factory allocated to the first conference server; and

connecting by the first conference server to the indicated multipoint control unit factory.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the request for a multipoint control unit factory is received by a multipoint control unit factory load balancer.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein each multipoint control unit factory in the pool of multipoint control unit factories maintains information regarding multipoint control units assigned to the multipoint control unit on a multipoint control unit factory store.

10. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving at the first conference server from the first client a request for a conferencing resource for the conference;

sending from the first conference server to the connected multipoint control unit factory a request for a multipoint control unit capable of providing the conferencing resource for the conference;

receiving at the first conference server from the connected multipoint control unit factory an indication of a multipoint control unit capable of providing the conferencing resource and which is allocated for the conference; and

providing by the first conference server to the first client the indication of the allocated multipoint control unit capable of providing the conferencing resource for the conference,

such that the client connects to the indicated multipoint control unit capable of providing the conferencing resource.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the allocated multipoint control unit provides information regarding the conference and the first client for maintaining on the shared conference store.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the information is provided to a conference server pool load balancer, and further wherein the conference server pool load balancer provides the received information to a conference server in the pool of conference servers for maintaining on the shared conference store.

13. A computer-implemented method for providing highly available multipoint control units, the method comprising:

providing a multipoint control unit factory pool comprising a plurality of multipoint control unit factories;

receiving at the multipoint control unit factory pool from a multipoint control unit a request to be assigned to a multipoint control unit factory in the multipoint control unit factory pool;

allocating by the multipoint control unit factory pool a multipoint control unit factory for the multipoint control unit; and

assigning by the multipoint control unit factory pool the multipoint control unit to the allocated multipoint control unit factory,

such that the allocated multipoint control unit factory maintains information regarding the assigned multipoint control unit on a multipoint control unit factory store.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the multipoint control unit is remote to the multipoint control unit factory pool.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein each of the plurality of multipoint control unit factories maintains information regarding its assigned multipoint control units on the multipoint control unit factory store.

16. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

receiving at the multipoint control unit factory pool from a conference server a request for a multipoint control unit factory to service a conference;

allocating by the multipoint control unit factory pool a multipoint control unit in the multipoint control unit factory pool to service the conference; and

providing by the multipoint control unit factory pool to the conference server an indication of the allocated multipoint control unit factory,

such that the conference server connects to the indicated multipoint control unit factory.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

receiving at the allocated multipoint control unit factory from the conference server a request for a multipoint control unit capable of providing a conferencing resource;

allocating by the allocated multipoint control unit factory one of its multipoint control units capable of providing the conferencing resource to the conference server; and

providing by the allocated multipoint control unit factory to the conference server an indication of the allocated multipoint control unit factory capable of providing the conferencing resource,

such that the conference server connects to the indicated multipoint control unit.

18. A conferencing system for providing highly available conferencing services, comprising:

a conference store for maintaining conference state information;

a pool of stateless conference servers, each conference server in the pool maintaining its conference state information on the conference store; and

a conference server pool load balancer for load balancing the conference servers in the pool.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the conference server pool load balancer, in response to detecting a need for an additional conference server to be added to the pool of conference servers, allocates an additional conference server to the pool of conference servers.

20. The system of claim 18 further comprising:

a multipoint control unit factory store for maintaining information regarding multipoint control units;

a pool of multipoint control unit factories, each multipoint control unit factory in the pool maintaining information regarding its assigned multipoint control units on the multipoint control unit factory store; and

a multipoint control unit factory load balancer for load balancing the multipoint control units in the pool.