Mechanism to Provide Assured Recovery for Distributed Application

• US 20130132765A1
• Filed: 01/18/2013
• Published: 05/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/29/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Peng, Hailin, Xu, Zhenghua, Liu, Victor
• Granted Patent: US 8,856,592 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4.11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/008 Reliability or availability analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1658 Data re-synchronization of a redundant component, or initial sync of replacement, additional or spare unit
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2023 Failover techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2048 where the redundant components share neither address space nor persistent storage
• 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: G06F 11/2294 by remote test
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data

Abstract

A system and method is provided for providing assured recovery for a distributed application. Replica servers associated with the distributed application may be coordinated to perform integrity testing together for the whole distributed application. The replica servers connect to each other in a manner similar to the connection between master servers associated with the distributed application, thereby preventing the replica servers from accessing and/or changing application data on the master servers during integrity testing.

Claims

1. A method for providing assured recovery for a distributed application executing on at least two masters servers that form a production server farm, the method comprising:

receiving an indication to initiate integrity testing of at least two replica servers, wherein the at least two replica servers are backup servers for corresponding ones of the at least two master servers and wherein the at least two replica servers connect to the at least two master servers during normal operation;

causing the at least two replica servers to connect to each other rather than the at least two master servers in response to the indication to initiate integrity testing, wherein the connection between the at least two replica servers substantially simulate a connection between the at least two master servers such that the at least two replica servers form a simulated server farm that substantially simulates the production server farm; and

re-directing one or more connection requests from a particular master server to the corresponding replica server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the re-directing further comprises creating a temporary server alias.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

re-directing one or more service access requests from a particular master server to the corresponding replica server, wherein the method further comprises;

configuring a second application service instance at the corresponding replica server that is similar to a first application service instance at the particular master server; and

redirecting the one or more service access requests from the first application service instance to the second application service instance.

4. A method for providing assured recovery for a distributed application executing on at least two masters servers that form a production server farm, the method comprising:

receiving an indication to initiate integrity testing of at least two replica servers, wherein the at least two replica servers are backup servers for corresponding ones of the at least two master servers and wherein the at least two replica servers connect to the at least two master servers during normal operation;

causing the at least two replica servers to connect to each other rather than the at least two master servers in response to the indication to initiate integrity testing, wherein the connection between the at least two replica servers simulate a connection between the at least two master servers such that the at least two replica servers form a simulated server farm that simulates the production server farm;

performing a first type of re-direct for a first connection request from a particular master server to the corresponding replica server, wherein the first connection request comprises a request to access a first type of data source; and

performing a second type of re-direct for a second connection request from the particular master server to the corresponding replica server, wherein the second connection request comprises a request to access a second type of data source,

wherein the second type of data source is different than the first type of data source, wherein the first type of re-direct is different than the second type of re-direct and based on the corresponding first type of data source and the corresponding second type of data source.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the first type of re-direct comprises creating a temporary server alias to access the first type of data source.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the second type of re-direct comprising:

configuring a second application service instance at the corresponding replica server that is similar to a first application service instance at the particular master server; and

redirecting the second connection request from the first application service instance to the second application service instance.