Automated recovery of computer appliances

• US 7,131,026 B2
• Filed: 05/10/2004
• Issued: 10/31/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/01/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Paul, Todd L., Denninghoff, Karl L..
• Primary Examiner(s): Beausoliel, Jr., Robert W.
• Assistant Examiner(s): MASKULINSKI, MICHAEL C
• Application Number:
  US10/842,263
• Publication Number:
  US 20040221194A1
• Time in Patent Office: 904 Days
• Field of Search: 714/6, 714/36
• US Class Current: 714/6.3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0706 the processing taking place on a specific hardware platform or in a specific software environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0781 Error filtering or prioritizing based on a policy defined by the user or on a policy defined by a hardware/software module, e.g. according to a severity level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1417 Boot up procedures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2094 Redundant storage or storage space G06F11/2056 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4406 Loading of operating system

Abstract

Aspects of the invention provide methods and architectures for enhancing the reliability of computer appliances and reducing the possibilities that human intervention is necessary in the event of a system failure or failure condition. The provided architecture is extensible and provides a generalized framework that is adaptable to many different types of computer appliances. One aspect of the invention provides a boot up redundancy component to ensure that a computer appliance can be appropriately booted. In the described embodiment, the appliance hard drive is configured with multiple partitions that can be utilized to boot the appliance thereby reducing the chances that the appliance will not boot. In addition, an architecture is disclosed that comprises one or more resource monitoring components that monitor an associated appliance resource for a failure condition. The resource monitoring components are programmed to attempt to remedy certain failure conditions that they detect. An appliance monitoring service is also provided and is programmed to attempt to remedy failure conditions that are not remedied by one or more of the resource monitoring objects.

Claims

1. A computer appliance boot-up redundancy component comprising:

a single hard disk configured for use in a single computer appliance;

a first operating system resident on the single hard disk and configured for booting the computer appliance; and

a second operating system resident on the single hard disk and configured for booting the computer appliance, the second operating system serving as a back up for the first operating system in the event that the single computer appliance cannot be booted from the first operating system, wherein there are four disk partitions from which the computer appliance can be booted, the four disk partitions being disposed across two separate hard disks.

2. The computer appliance boot-up redundancy component of claim 1 further comprising a software component programmed to attempt to boot the computer appliance using the first operating system and, if unsuccessful, to attempt to boot the computer appliance using the second operating system.

3. The computer appliance boot-up redundancy component of claim 1 further comprising a second hard disk having copies of the first and second operating system resident thereon, the second hard disk being configured for use in booting the computer appliance in the event that the computer appliance cannot be booted using said single hard disk.

4. The computer appliance boot-up redundancy component of claim 3 further comprising a software component programmed to attempt to boot the computer appliance using the first operating system and, if unsuccessful, to attempt to boot the computer appliance using the second operating system, the software component further being programmed to attempt to boot from the second hard disk in the event that it cannot boot from said single hard disk.

5. A computer appliance comprising the computer appliance boot-up redundancy component of claim 1.

6. A computer appliance comprising:

one or more computer-readable media;

a BIOS component programmed to boot the computer appliance;

a first operating system resident on the one or more computer-readable media and configured for use by the BIOS component in booting the computer appliance; and

a second operating system resident on the one or more computer-readable media and configured for use by the BIOS component in booting the computer appliance, the second operating system serving as a back up operating system for the first operating system and useable by the BIOS component in the event that the first operating system cannot be used to successfully boot the computer appliance, wherein there are four disk partitions from which the computer appliance can be booted, the four disk partitions being disposed across two separate hard disks.

7. The computer appliance of claim 6, wherein the first and second operating systems are resident on a common computer-readable media.

8. The computer appliance of claim 6, wherein the first and second operating systems are resident on a common hard disk.

9. The computer appliance of claim 6, wherein the BIOS component is programmed to attempt to boot the computer appliance from the first operating system a predefined number of times and, if unsuccessful, to attempt to boot the computer appliance from the second operating system a predefined number of times.

10. A method of providing redundancy in a computer appliance comprising:

allocating a first portion of a hard disk for code that implements a first operating system for a computer appliance;

storing code that implements a first operating system in the allocated first portion of the hard disk;

allocating a second portion of the hard disk for code that implements a second operating system for the computer appliance that serves as a backup for the first operating system; and

storing code that implements a second operating system in the allocated second portion of the hard disk,

allocating a first portion of another hard disk for code that implements a third operating system for a computer appliance;

storing code that implements a third operating system in the allocated first portion of the other hard disk;

allocating a second portion of the other hard disk for code that implements a fourth operating system for the computer appliance that serves as a backup for the third operating system; and

storing code that implements a fourth operating system in the allocated second portion of the other hard disk.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising attempting to boot a computer appliance using the first portion of the hard disk and, if unsuccessful, attempting to boot the computer appliance using the second portion of the hard disk.

12. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions thereon which, when executed by a computer appliance, implement the method of claim 10.

13. A method of providing a computer appliance boot redundancy structure comprising:

allocating a first partition on a hard disk to contain a first operating system configured for use in a computer appliance; and

allocating a second partition on the hard disk to contain a second operating system configured for use in the computer appliance.

allocating a first partition on another hard disk to contain a third operating system configured for use in a computer appliance; and

allocating a second partition on the other hard disk to contain a fourth operating system configured for use in the computer appliance.

14. A computer appliance booting method comprising:

defining a boot count variable that represents the number of times a particular appliance is attempted to be booted;

assigning an initial value to the boot count variable;

defining a threshold value for the boot count variable;

initiating a boot up process from a selected disk partition and, in connection therewith, incrementing the boot count variable from its initial value;

determining whether the boot up process is successful;

if the boot up process is successful, decrementing the boot count variable;

in the event that the boot up process is not successful;

ascertaining whether the boot count variable satisfies a predefined relationship relative to the threshold value; and

if the predefined relationship is not satisfied, re-initiating the boot up process from said selected disk partition, otherwise, determining whether there is another disk partition from which to boot; and

if there is another disk partition from which to boot, initiating a boot up process from said another disk partition, wherein there are four disk partitions from which the computer appliance can be booted, the four disk partitions being disposed across two separate hard disks.

15. The computer appliance booting method of claim 14, wherein there are at least two disk partitions from which the computer appliance can be booted.

16. The computer appliance booting method of claim 14, wherein there are at least two disk partitions on a common disk from which the computer appliance can be booted.

17. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions thereon which, when executed by a computer appliance, implement the method of claim 14.