HIGH-AVAILABILITY COMPUTER CLUSTER WITH FAILOVER SUPPORT BASED ON A RESOURCE MAP

• US 20120047394A1
• Filed: 08/17/2010
• Published: 02/23/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/17/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Sarkar, Prasenjit, Seaman, Mark James, Jain, Reshu
• Granted Patent: US 8,738,961 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4.11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2028 eliminating a faulty processor or activating a spare

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention relate to handling failures in a cluster of computer resources. The resources are represented as nodes in a dependency graph in which some nodes are articulation points and the removal of any articulation point due to a resource failure results in a disconnected graph. The embodiments perform a failover when a resource corresponding to an articulation point fails. The failover is to a local resource if the failed resource does not affect all local resources. The failover is to a remote resource if no local resource can meet all resource requirements of the failed resource, and to a remote resource running in a degraded mode if the remote resource cannot meet all of the requirements.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

representing a cluster of computer resources as nodes in a dependency graph, the nodes including a plurality of articulation points, wherein removal of an articulation point due to a resource failure results in a disconnected dependency graph; and

if a failed resource corresponds to an articulation point, performing a failover for the failed resource.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the resources comprise local resources and the failover is to a local resource if the failed resource does not affect all of the local resources.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the resources comprise remote resources, each resource is associated with a plurality of resource requirements, and the failover is to a remote resource if the remote resource can meet the resource requirements of the failed resource.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the failover is to a remote resource running in a degraded mode if the remote resource cannot meet all of the resource requirements of the failed resource.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the remote resource is part of a remote computer cluster.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the resource requirements are selected from the group consisting of:

CPU requirements, memory requirements, and disk performance requirements.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the computer resources comprise computer nodes.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the computer resources comprise data storage systems.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the computer resources comprise storage area networks (SANs).

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the computer resources comprise computer networks and network devices.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the cluster is part of a data center computer system.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the failed resource is associated with a plurality of actions to be performed by the cluster in case of a failover.

13. A system comprising:

a plurality of interconnected computer resources;

logic for representing the computer resources as nodes in a dependency graph, the nodes including a plurality of articulation points wherein removal of an articulation point due to a resource failure results in a disconnected dependency graph; and

logic for performing a failover for a failed resource if the failed resource corresponds to an articulation point.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the resources comprise local resources and the failover is to a local resource if the failed resource does not affect all of the local resources.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the resources comprise remote resources, each resource is associated with a plurality of resource requirements, and the failover is to a remote resource if the remote resource can meet the resource requirements of the failed resource.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the failover is to a remote resource running in a degraded mode if the remote resource cannot meet all of the resource requirements of the failed resource.

17. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising:

computer readable program code configured to represent the computer resources as nodes in a dependency graph, the nodes including a plurality of articulation points wherein removal of an articulation point due to a resource failure results in a disconnected dependency graph; and

computer readable program code configured to perform a failover for a failed resource if the failed resource corresponds to an articulation point.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein the resources comprise local resources and the failover is to a local resource if the failed resource does not affect all of the local resources.

19. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein the resources comprise remote resources, each resource is associated with a plurality of resource requirements, and the failover is to a remote resource if the remote resource can meet the resource requirements of the failed resource.

20. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein the failover is to a remote resource running in a degraded mode if the remote resource cannot meet all of the resource requirements of the failed resource.