Multi-chassis fabric-backplane enterprise servers

• US 7,873,693 B1
• Filed: 02/12/2005
• Issued: 01/18/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/13/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Habanero Holdings Incorporated
• Inventors: Nicolaou, Cosmos, Mehrotra, Sharad, Saraiya, Nakul Pratap, Lovett, Thomas Dean, Shingane, Mangesh, Finkelstein, Yuri, Collins, Curtis M., Hanson, Geoffrey H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Vaughn, Jr., William C
• Assistant Examiner(s): Gupta, Muktesh G
• Application Number:
  US11/057,035
• Time in Patent Office: 2,166 Days
• Field of Search: 370/235, 370/401, 710/316, 709/203, 709/250
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4641 Virtual LANs, VLANs, e.g. virtual private networks [VPN] LAN interconnection over a bridge based backbone H04L12/462; encapsulation techniques H04L12/4633; routing of packets H04L45/00; packet switches H04L49/00; virtual private networks for security H04L63/0272
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/357 Fibre channel switches
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/45 Arrangements for providing or supporting expansion
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/602 Multilayer or multiprotocol switching, e.g. IP switching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/70 Virtual switches

Abstract

Multi-chassis fabric-backplane enterprise servers include a plurality of chassis managed collectively to form one or more provisioned servers. A central client coordinates gathering of provisioning and management information from the chassis, and arranges for distribution of control information to the chassis. One of the chassis may perform as a host or proxy with respect to information and control communication between the client and the chassis. Server provisioning and management information and commands move throughout the chassis via an Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol. Alternatively, the client may establish individual communication with a subset of the chassis, and directly communicate with chassis in the subset. Server provisioning and management information includes events generated when module status changes, such as when a module is inserted and becomes available, and when a module fails and is no longer available. Each chassis includes a switch fabric enabling communication between chassis modules.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

communicating multi-backplane control instructions from a multi-backplane control agent to a portal multi-backplane platform process;

broadcasting the multi-backplane control instructions from the portal multi-backplane platform process to a plurality of peer multi-backplane platform processes executing in a respective plurality of backplane systems;

wherein at least one of the backplane systems comprises at least a first partition of a plurality of partitionable symmetric multiprocessors, the first partition being formed at least in part by programmatically configuring links between processors of the physically partitionable symmetric multiprocessor to selectively isolate subsets of the processors with respect to respective shared memory coherency and cache coherency transactions on a link-by-link basis, and the multi-backplane control instructions comprise at least one instruction directed to the first partition;

and wherein the broadcasting is at least in part via at least one link enabled to co-mingle server-management-related-traffic and non-server-management-related-traffic.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the broadcasting of the multi-backplane control instructions is at least in part via an open shortest path first protocol.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the backplane systems is comprised in a respective chassis.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein each of the chassis comprises a respective switch fabric and at least a portion of the multi-backplane control instructions are communicated in part via at least one of the switch fabrics.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the first partition receives the portion of the multi-backplane control instructions via the at least one switch fabric.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising propagating multi-backplane control data from the peer multi-backplane platform processes to the portal multi-backplane platform process.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the propagating of the multi-backplane control data is at least in part via an open shortest path first protocol.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising communicating multi-fabric control data from the portal multi-backplane platform process to the multi-backplane control agent.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the multi-backplane control agent determines at least a portion of the multi-backplane control instructions based in part on at least a portion of multi-backplane control data received from the peer multi-backplane platform processes via the portal multi-backplane platform process.