Method and apparatus for communicating among a network of servers

• US 6,807,580 B2
• Filed: 01/23/2001
• Issued: 10/19/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 05/08/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Original Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Inventors: Pedersen, Bradley Jay, Freeman, Thomas D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lim, Krisna
• Application Number:
  US09/767,774
• Publication Number:
  US 20010049717A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,365 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709/224, 709/235, 709/226, 709/219, 709/232, 709/249
• US Class Current: 709/249
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/508 Monitor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5027 the resource being a machine, e.g. CPUs, Servers, Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/101 based on network conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1021 based on client or server locations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1027 Persistence of sessions during load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1034 Reaction to server failures by a load balancer

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for communication between servers. In one aspect, the invention relates to a multi-server system including a first server and a second server. The first server has a first plurality of subsystems and a first event bus associated with the first plurality of subsystems, the first event bus including a first event delivery object having a first dispatch table and a first transport mechanism associated with the first event delivery object. The second server has a second plurality of subsystems. One of the first plurality of subsystems communicates with one of the second plurality of subsystems by transmitting an event to the first transport mechanism based on an entry in the first dispatch table. In one embodiment, the first transport mechanism transmits data using TCP/IP. In another embodiment, the first plurality of subsystems includes a transport subsystem. In another embodiment, the transport subsystem is in communication with the second server. In another embodiment, each of the first plurality of subsystems has an associated unique identifier. In another embodiment, one of the first plurality of subsystems creates an event having an identifier unique to the creating subsystem.

Claims

1. In a computer network including a plurality of servers in a server farm, said server farm comprising a logical group of servers administered as a single entity, a method for managing running data generated by the servers, the method comprising the steps of:

designating at least two servers in the server farm as collector points for collecting said runtime data of a first type, said runtime data of a first type including at least one of server status information, client session data, licensing information, loading information, and a current workload of each server in the plurality of servers in the server farm; and

assigning a first subset of the plurality of the servers in the server farm to transmit said runtime data of the first type to at least one of the collector points and a second subset of the plurality of servers in the server farm to transmit said runtime data of the first type to another of the collector points.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of:

designing one of the servers in the first subset of servers, other than the server that is designated as a collector point of the first type of data, as a collector point for collecting data of a second type.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of designating one of the collector points as a collector point for also collecting data of a second type.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising defining at least one of the first subset and the second subset based on geographic locations of the servers in the server farm.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of communicating with one of the collector points when requesting data of the first type.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of communicating with one of the collector points when storing data of the first type.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the designation of at least one of the servers as a collector point is made according to a criterion.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the designation is based on a boot order of the servers in the server farm.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining that one of the collector points is unavailable and selecting another collector point to replace the unavailable collector point.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising designating one of the servers in the second subset of servers as a collector point for collecting data of the first type.

11. In a computer network including a plurality of servers in a server farm, a method for routing runtime data generated by one server in the server farm to every other server in the server farm, the method comprising the steps of:

defining a plurality of subsets of servers, each subset including one or more servers;

designating one server in each subset as a collector point for said runtime data;

transmitting said runtime data from a given server to a first collector point;

transmitting the runtime data from the first collector point to a second collector point; and

transmitting the runtime data from each collector point to each server in the same subset as that collector point.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the first and second collector points are in the same subset.