Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Frank Ronneburg

Erik Mavrinac

Daniel Ron Simon

Jeffrey J Westhead

Guillaume Bailey

Anthony Goodrich Jones

Shyam Seshadri

Vamshi Krishna Kancharla

Multiple peer domain name system (DNS) servers are included in a multi-master DNS environment. One of the multiple peer DNS servers is a key master peer DNS server that generates one or more keys for a DNS zone serviced by the multiple peer DNS servers. The key master peer DNS server can also generate a signing key descriptor that identifies the set of one or more keys for the DNS zone, and communicate the signing key descriptor to the other ones of the multiple peer DNS servers.

Supporting DNS security in a multi-master environment

Method and system for detecting a dead server in a multi-server environment. A virtual ring structure is used in which each server in a server pool is only required to monitor the status of two other servers in the server pool. Thus, a server need only transmit ping signals to two other servers (its buddies) in the server pool at any given time. Because each server maintains the status of only two other servers at any given time, the size of the server pool is not limited by the ability of each server to send and process ping signals. The two servers which are monitored by any given server in the server pool are referred to as the 'buddy A' server and the 'buddy B' server. When the monitoring server determines that one of its buddy servers is down, the monitoring server reports the status of the down server to a SQL server that maintains a server table. The server table maintains a list of each &#x201c;live&#x201d; server and the buddy servers assigned to that server. Down servers are removed from the server table. When a server determines that one of its buddies is down, the report to the SQL server results in a buddy reassignment. The buddies of the down server are made buddies of one another and the virtual server ring is once more intact. The SQL server then knows not to route any client to the down server.

Method and system for detecting a dead server

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Frank Ronneburg