Distributed Computing With Multiple Coordinated Component Collections

• US 20100011096A1
• Filed: 07/10/2008
• Published: 01/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Juniper Networks Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Blackwave Inc. (Juniper Networks Incorporated)
• Inventors: Gerovac, Branko J., Carver, David C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,650,270 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/52 Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores

Abstract

A system having components that collectively perform functions and services of the system. The components are managed as belonging to at least a first component collection and a second component collection. The components of the first component collection operate at a time scale that is substantially temporally independent of the components of the second component collection. The components of the first component collection have a first set of temporal requirements and the components of the second component collection have a second substantially different set of temporal requirements.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

components that collectively perform functions and services of the system, the components being managed as belonging to at least a first component collection and a second component collection, wherein;

the components of the first component collection operate at a time scale that is substantially temporally independent of the components of the second component collection; and

the components of the first component collection have a first set of temporal requirements and the components of the second component collection have a second substantially different set of temporal requirements.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the components are further managed as belonging to a third component collection, and wherein:

the components of the third component collection operate at a time scale that is substantially temporally independent of the components of the first and second component collections; and

the components of the third component collection have a third set of temporal requirements, the third set of temporal requirements being substantially different from both the first and second sets of temporal requirements.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the components of each component collection internally coordinate respective operations in accordance with a collection-specific consistency model.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the components are hosted on a plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a data network.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the components of the first component collection are hosted on a first plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a data network; and

the components of the second component collection are hosted on a second plurality of nodes that are interconnected by the data network.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the components of the first component collection are hosted on a first plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a data network, the first plurality of nodes including a first node; and

the components of the second component collection are hosted exclusively on the first node.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the component collections implements a consistency approach for maintaining a shared state accessible to components of that component collection.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein external interfaces of the system are exposed by multiple of the component collections.

9. A system comprising:

components that collectively perform functions of the system, the components being managed as belonging to respective ones of the following planes;

a system plane, a content plane, a session plane, an access plane, and a transfer plane, wherein;

the components of each plane operate at a time scale that is substantially temporally independent of the components of any one of the other planes; and

the components of each plane have temporal requirements that are substantially different from those of components of any one of the other planes.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of each plane internally coordinate respective operations in accordance with a plane-specific consistency model.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of the system plane collectively implement functions that provide overall visibility and management of the system.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of the content plane collectively implement functions that organize and manage content storage on the system.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of the session plane collectively implement session management functions.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the session management functions include one or more of the following:

session initiation, session termination, and session-specific resource allocation.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of the access plane collectively implement functions to enable data transfers associated with one or more storage resource elements.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the components of the transfer plane collectively implement functions to perform data transfers.

17. The system of claim 9, wherein the components are hosted on a plurality of nodes that are interconnected by a data network.

18. A method comprising:

managing components of a system as belonging to at least a first component collection and a second component collection;

enabling components of the first component collection to operate on a time scale that is substantially temporally independent of a time scale on which the components of the second component collection operate; and

internally coordinating operations executed by components of the first component collection in accordance with a first set of temporal requirements and separately internally coordinating operations executed by components of the second component collection in accordance with a second different set of temporal requirements.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

enabling communication of requests between components of the first and second component collections without requiring coordination of distinct requests.

20. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

enabling communications to pass between pairs of planes without regard as to coordination requirements of the components associated with the respective communications.

21. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

enabling communications to pass between pairs of components that operate on different time scales

22. A distributed system hosted on a plurality interconnected nodes, the system comprising:

a plurality of planes, each plane including a plurality of components hosted on nodes of the system, wherein each plane independently implements a consistency approach among distributed components of that plane; and

interconnections between interfaces of the planes, wherein each plane provides interfaces to other planes at one or more of the computing platforms without guaranteeing consistency for requests received at the interfaces to other planes.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein at least one of the planes implements a consistency approach for maintaining a shared state accessible to components of the plane.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein external interfaces of the system are provided by multiple of the planes.

25. The system of claim 22 applied to access and storage of multimedia content, in which:

a transfer plane of the plurality of planes includes components for transfer of content between nodes; and

a system plane of the plurality of planes includes components for managing configuration information for the system.