RECOVERY SERVICE LOCATION FOR A SERVICE

• US 20120311376A1
• Filed: 06/06/2011
• Published: 12/06/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Taranov, Viktoriya, Hopmann, Alexander, Voronkov, Nikita, Somasundaram, Ramanathan, Kokhan, Artsiom, Shah, Siddharth Rajendra, Blood, Daniel, Doshi, Bhavesh, Da Silva, Antonio Marcos Jr., Luk, Kai Yiu
• Granted Patent: US 8,938,638 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/4.11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1448 Management of the data involved in backup or backup restore
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1471 involving logging of persistent data for recovery
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2023 Failover techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2033 switching over of hardware resources
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2038 with a single 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 16/273 Asynchronous replication or reconciliation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/80 Database-specific techniques

Abstract

A secondary location of a network acts as a recovery network for a primary location of the service. The secondary location is maintained in a warm state that is configured to replace the primary location in a case of a failover. During normal operation, the primary location actively services user load and performs backups that include full backups, incremental backups and transaction logs that are automatically replicated to the secondary location. Information is stored (e.g. time, retry count) that may be used to assist in determining when the backups are restored correctly at the secondary location. The backups are restored and the transaction logs are replayed at the secondary location to reflect changes (content and administrative) that are made to the primary location. After failover to the secondary location, the secondary location becomes the primary location and begins to actively service the user load.

Claims

1. A method for establishing and maintaining a recovery service location for a service, comprising:

synchronizing a primary location of a service with a secondary location of the service while the primary location of the service is actively receiving requests from users, wherein the secondary location of the service is substantially configured the same as the primary location of the service and is updated as the primary location is updated;

detecting a network failure of the primary location of the service; and

setting the secondary location of the service as the primary location in response to the network failure.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises creating full backups, incremental backups that are created between the full backups and transaction logs.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises maintaining tenant data separately from application data for the service.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises replaying the transaction logs as they are received at the secondary location of the service.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising establishing mirroring for the secondary location of the service after switching the requests from the primary location to the secondary location.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising verifying an integrity of the synchronization at the secondary location.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises storing a time of the backup for the backup in a sortable format.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein storing the time of the backup comprises including a read count that is updated when the backup is read and storing a name of a database.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises using Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) to move data in a one-way direction from the primary location to the secondary location that includes different share names at the primary location and secondary location.

10. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for establishing and maintaining a recovery service location for a service, comprising:

synchronizing a primary location of a service with a secondary location of the service while the primary location of the service is actively receiving requests from users by performing actions, comprising;

creating full backups of databases;

creating incremental backups between the full backups of the databases;

creating transaction logs;

providing the full backups, incremental backups and transaction logs to the secondary location, wherein the transaction logs are replayed at the secondary location;

detecting a network failure of the primary location of the service; and

setting the secondary location of the service as the primary location in response to the network failure.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises maintaining tenant data separately from application data for the service.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising establishing mirroring for the secondary location of the service after switching the requests from the primary location to the secondary location.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising verifying an integrity of the synchronization at the secondary location at predetermined times.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises including a time of the backup within a filename for the backup in a sortable format and at least one of:

a read count within the filename when the backup is read at the secondary location that is updated when the backup is read and including a name database within the filename for the backup.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises using Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) to move data in a one-way direction from the primary location to the secondary location that includes different share names at the primary location and secondary location.

16. A system for establishing and maintaining a recovery service location for a service, comprising:

a processor and a computer-readable medium;

an operating environment stored on the computer-readable medium and executing on the processor; and

a cloud manager operative to perform actions, comprising;

synchronizing a primary location of a service with a secondary location of the service while the primary location of the service is actively receiving requests from users by performing actions, comprising;

creating backups including transaction logs of databases;

providing the backups and the transaction logs to the secondary location for replay at the secondary location;

detecting a network failure of the primary location of the service; and

setting the secondary location of the service as the primary location in response to the network failure.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises maintaining tenant data separately from application data for the service.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising verifying an integrity of the synchronization at the secondary location at predetermined times.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises storing a time of the backup in a sortable format and at least one of:

a read count indicating when the backup is read at the secondary location that is updated when the backup is read and storing a name database for the backup.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein synchronizing the primary location of the service with the secondary location of the service comprises using Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) to move data in a one-way direction from the primary location to the secondary location that includes different share names at the primary location and secondary location.