Non-disruptive failover of RDMA connection

• US 8,627,136 B2
• Filed: 12/27/2010
• Issued: 01/07/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Shankar, Hari, Liu, Huadong, Li, Hua
• Primary Examiner(s): MCCARTHY, CHRISTOPHER S
• Application Number:
  US12/978,866
• Publication Number:
  US 20120166886A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,107 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 714/4.11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2028 eliminating a faulty processor or activating a spare
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2046 where the redundant components share persistent storage G06F11/2043 takes precedence
• 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: H04L 41/0654 using network fault recovery ring fault isolation or reconfiguration in loop networks without recovery actions by a network management system H04L12/437

Abstract

A novel RDMA connection failover technique that minimizes disruption to upper subsystem modules (executed on a computer node), which create requests for data transfer. A new failover virtual layer performs failover of an RDMA connection in error so that the upper subsystem that created a request does not have knowledge of an error (which is recoverable in software and hardware), or of a failure on the RDMA connection due to the error. Since the upper subsystem does not have knowledge of a failure on the RDMA connection or of a performed failover of the RDMA connection, the upper subsystem continues providing requests to the failover virtual layer without interruption, thereby minimizing downtime of the data transfer activity.

Claims