MULTICHANNEL CONNECTIONS IN FILE SYSTEM SESSIONS

• US 20120144019A1
• Filed: 12/06/2010
• Published: 06/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kruse, David M., George, Mathew, Zhu, Qibo, Shang, MingDong (Gary)
• Granted Patent: US 8,806,030 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/141 Setup of application sessions admission control or resource allocation in data switching networks H04L47/70
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/14 Multichannel or multilink protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/24 Negotiation of communication capabilities
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/50 in wire-line communication networks, e.g. low power modes or reduced link rate

Abstract

A multi-connection information system is described herein that uses multiple connections to connect to a resource in a single file system session in a way that is controllable from protocols above a transport layer. The system also allows a single connection to be shared by multiple sessions. Sessions can be bound to multiple connections to enable communication over multiple transports. During the initial negotiation of a session, a client and a server determine whether multiple connections are supported between the client and the server within a session. After establishing an initial connection, additional connections can be established and bound to the existing session. The multiple connections can be used for failover and/or load balancing. The multi-connection information system provides a protocol for discovering a capability to establish multiple channels within a session and information about the available connections between two particular resources.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for initiating a session allowing multiple connections in a file system and receiving transport information, the method comprising:

receiving from an application a request to initiate a session between a client and a server;

determining one or more available transports available for establishing a connection between the client and the server;

selecting an initial transport for sending commands between the client and server;

establishing a connection via the selected transport;

binding the established connection to the initiated session; and

sending a command received from the application through the established connection bound to the session,

wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the request comprises receiving a request from an application to access a file stored remotely on the server using Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the request comprises setting up a session and sending one or more packets to the server to negotiate available dialects of the network protocol used to communicate between the client and server.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the request comprises querying the server to determine whether the server supports multi-connection sessions.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein determining available transports comprises querying a domain name system (DNS) server to identify one or more addresses of the server.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein determining available transports comprises querying a client operating system to identify available network interfaces.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein determining available transports comprises querying sending a capabilities request to the server to identify available network interfaces on the server.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein selecting the initial transport comprises selecting based on application-specified criteria that establishes the application'"'"'s connection preferences.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein establishing the connection comprises sending a negotiate message over the selected transport that sets up a Server Message Block (SMB) connection.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein binding the established connection comprises preparing the connection for use by the session for sending commands from the client to the server.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein binding the established connection comprises storing information for cleaning up the session and/or connection.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein sending the command comprises selecting among multiple bound connections to choose one or more connections suited to handling the current command.

13. A computer system for providing multichannel connections in file system sessions, the system comprising:

a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions embodied within the following components;

a session initiation component that receives requests to initiate a session between a client and a server for sharing one or more resources;

a channel discovery component that determines one or more connection transports that are available for communication between the client and server;

a channel selection component that selects one or more connection transports from the determined available connection transports to bind to the session between the client and the server;

a binding component that associates the selected connection transports with the session;

a command receiving component that receives one or more commands related to a session between the client and the server; and

a command routing component that selects a connection transport bound to a session over which to send a particular command.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the session initiation component is further configured to receive a request from an application running on the client that identifies the server to which the application wants to connect to access files or other resources.

15. The system of claim 13 wherein the channel discovery component is further configured to determine whether each connection transport supports Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and/or Receive Scaling Support (RSS).

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the channel selection component is further configured to establish a first connection to the server, and then upon discovering that a condition exists, later establish additional connections to the server.

17. The system of claim 13 wherein the binding component is further configured to capture information about a security principal associated with a particular series of communications between the client and server and associate that information with the session.

18. The system of claim 13 wherein the command routing component is further configured to split a command up and use multiple transports to carry out the command to increase throughput.

19. The system of claim 13 further comprising a failover handling component that handles a disconnection of a particular transport connection from the session by routing subsequent commands to one or more still-connected transports and by replaying any commands not carried out on the disconnected transport connection on a still-connected transport connection.

20. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to add an additional connection to a previously established remote file system connection, wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:

detecting a condition for establishing an additional connection for a previously established session that already has at least one bound connection between a client and a server;

selecting an additional transport from a previously discovered list of transports available to the client and the server;

establishing a connection via the selected transport between the client and the server;

binding the newly established connection to the existing session, so that the session has multiple available connections from which to select from upon sending a file system command;

receiving an application-level command destined for the server to which there are now multiple connections; and

selecting one or more transports among both the newly established connections and one or more previous connections over which to send the received command.