High availability architecture for a cloud-based concurrent-access collaboration platform

• US 9,483,473 B2
• Filed: 09/02/2014
• Issued: 11/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/13/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Inventors: Ansel, Michael, Spielberg, Miles, Cheng, Yuan, Co Ting Keh, Lance, Boulanger, Antoine, Berger, Jonathan, Mangtani, Komal, Gao, Kevin, Wong, Remington, Semsarilar, Naeim, Chen, Yingming, Jourda, Florian
• Primary Examiner(s): Lim, Krisna
• Application Number:
  US14/474,507
• Publication Number:
  US 20150081773A1
• Time in Patent Office: 791 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/14 Error detection or correction of the data by redundancy in operation G06F11/16 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1425 by reconfiguration of node membership
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/202 where processing functionality is redundant redundant communication control functionality G06F11/2005, redundant storage control functionality G06F11/2089
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2094 Redundant storage or storage space G06F11/2056 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: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1031 Controlling of the operation of servers by a load balancer, e.g. adding or removing servers that serve requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1038 Load balancing arrangements to avoid a single path through a load balancer

Abstract

Embodiments in the present disclosure include systems and methods related to a high-availability architecture for a cloud-based concurrent-access collaboration platform. The disclosed technology relates to an active data center which includes multiple document server instances that handle user requests for concurrently accessing documents. Multiple document server instances are implemented on a single physical server. This architecture uses an instance assignment manager to assign documents to the document server instances, a primary repository to store backup snapshots of the documents, and a datastore to store all changes made to the documents. The disclosed technology also involves a backup data center that can be swapped with the active data center automatically.

Claims

1. A high-availability system for managing documents on a cloud-based computing platform, the system comprising:

two or more load balancers configured to route requests received from a client;

one or more document servers for handling the requests routed by the two or more load balancers,

wherein each document server includes multiple document server instances, each of which is responsible for processing edits for particular documents, and

wherein each document is dynamically associated with one document server instance;

a primary repository for periodically uploading snapshots of documents from the one or more document server instances, and

a secondary repository for storing edits to the documents.

2. The high-availability system of claim 1 wherein, in response to uploading snapshots, the primary repository generates one or more notifications for collaborators associated with respective documents for which the snapshots are uploaded.

3. The high-availability system of claim 1, wherein the snapshots include copies of full text documents, and wherein the snapshots are uploaded to the primary repository at predetermined time intervals.

4. The high-availability system of claim 1, wherein the edits to documents are uploaded to the secondary repository in real-time or near real-time.

5. The high-availability system of claim 1, further comprising a security manager component for encrypting and decrypting document data for the document server instance, wherein the document data includes any one or more of:

full document content, document changes and encryption keys.

6. The high-availability system of claim 1, wherein each of the multiple document server instances includes a buffering layer implemented in an abstraction layer.

7. The high-availability system of claim 6, wherein document data is:

stored in the buffering layer;

encrypted in the buffering layer through the security manager component; and

uploaded, in encrypted form, to the secondary repository.

8. The high-availability system of claim 7, wherein each document server instance on a document server includes a respective upload queue, each respective upload queue including snapshots of documents queued for upload to the primary repository, and wherein the snapshots in each upload queue are associated with documents being accessed through the respective document server instance.

9. The high-availability system of claim 1, further comprising an instance assignment manager for maintaining an assignment of each document to a document server instance on a document server, wherein, if a change in status of a document server or document server instance is detected, the instance assignment manager updates the assignment according to the change.

10. The high-availability system of claim 9, wherein the instance assignment manager divides a document storage space into zones, associates a document server instance with one or more of the zones, and assigns the documents into the zones.

11. The high-availability system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the load balancers is coupled to a proxy server, and wherein any requests for static assets received from the client are routed by the proxy server.