Enterprise service availability through identity preservation

• US 20070174691A1
• Filed: 08/07/2006
• Published: 07/26/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Mimosa Systems Incorporated (Iron Mountain Incorporated)
• Inventors: Ravi, T.M., D'Souza, Roy
• Granted Patent: US 7,657,780 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/13
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1662 the resynchronized component or unit being a persistent storage device re-synchronization of failed mirror storage G06F11/2082; rebuild or reconstruction of parity RAID storage G06F11/1008
• 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 11/2041 with more than one idle spare processing component
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2048 where the redundant components share neither address space nor persistent storage
• 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 16/252 between a Database Management System and a front-end application

Abstract

Systems and methods are described for service availability that provides automated recovery of server service in a timely and application intelligent manner, maintaining application consistency and integrity, while preserving server identity. The systems and methods, referred to herein as a Service Preservation System (SPS), manage complete recovery of server data and preserve continuity of server service, reestablishing user access to server(s) after an event or disaster in which in which primary or other server(s) fail. The failures, disasters, and losses referred to herein can be at many levels and include, but are not limited to, accidental deletion of an item, loss of an entire mailbox, loss of an entire disk drive, loss of an entire server, and/or loss of an entire server site.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more near-line servers coupled to one or more live servers that include data that provides services to a plurality of clients; and

an engine coupled to the near-line servers and configured to continuously shadow the live servers by generating and maintaining a replica of the data, wherein the engine is configured to automatically restore the services to the clients using one or more standby servers in response to a detected failure of the one or more live servers, the restoring including copying the replica of the data to the standby server.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one network coupled to the one or more near-line servers.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the at least one network includes a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), metropolitan area network (MAN), and storage area network (SAN).

4. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the live servers and the standby servers is identified and addressed independently.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the shadowing generates and maintains the replica of the data in near real-time on the one or more near-line servers, wherein the shadowing maintains complete integrity and consistency of the data.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the restoring includes the one or more near-line servers preserving continuity of the services by automatically re-establishing access to the services by the clients.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the restoring includes the one or more near-line servers restarting services corresponding to the data on the standby server.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the restoring includes the one or more near-line servers rebinding mailboxes in a directory service to the standby server.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the restoring includes the one or more near-line servers re-homing the clients.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a first near-line server co-located with the live servers at a first site and a second near-line server located at a second site.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the replica of the data is stored on the first near-line server during the shadowing, wherein the replica of the data is replicated from the first near-line server to the second near-line server.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the replica of the data is propagated to the standby server from the first near-line server.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the replica of the data is propagated to the standby server from the second near-line server.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one near-line server includes a first near-line server co-located with the live servers at a first site and a second near-line server co-located with the standby servers at a second site.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the replica of the data is stored on the first near-line server during the shadowing, wherein the replica of the data is replicated from the first near-line server to the second near-line server.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the first near-line server.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the replica of the data is copied to the standby server from the second near-line server.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the data includes one or more of application data, databases, storage groups, mailbox data, and server data.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more live servers include one or more of local servers, remote servers, database servers, messaging servers, electronic mail servers, instant messaging servers, Exchange Servers, voice-over Internet Protocol servers, collaboration servers, portals, customer relationship management (CRM) servers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) servers, business-to-business servers, and content management servers.

20. The system of claim 1, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes host-based replication of the data on the standby servers.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein host-based replication comprises:

writing data of the live servers to local storage of the live server; and

writing data of the live servers to remote storage of the standby server.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein automatically restoring the services includes a standby server assuming an identity and address of a live server that has failed.

23. The system of claim 1, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes storage-based replication of the data on the standby servers.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein storage-based replication comprises

writing data of the live servers to local storage of the live server;

and

replicating data of the local storage of the live server to remote storage of the standby server.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein automatically restoring the services includes a standby server assuming an identity and address of a live server that has failed.

26. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one proxy coupled between the clients, the live servers, and the standby servers, wherein generating and maintaining the replica includes the proxy writing data of the plurality of clients to components of at least one of the live servers and to components of at least one of the standby servers.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein automatically restoring the services includes the proxy switching the clients from a failed live server to a standby server to which data was written.