Lucent Technologies Inc.

James P Schoonover

Dale F Rathunde

John H Pokropinski

Reginald L Allen

Bonnie Lewis Prokopowicz

Debra K Haddad

Susan A Lee

Raymond D Smith

A method and an apparatus for providing scalable layers of highly available applications using loosely coupled commercially available computers. The software running on the loosely coupled computers is divided into three layers: the system layer, the platform layer, and the application layer, each having its own process group activation and fault recovery strategy. A process group contains software processes that depend upon a set of resources common to the process group. In addition to depending upon a common set of resources, processes within a process group share a fault recovery strategy. Fault recovery is performed at the process group level, such that if one process within a process group fails, fault recovery is takes place for all processes within the process group. In the preferred embodiment, an application layer process group may be paired with another application layer process group on a separate computer. As part of certain escalated process group fault recovery strategies, upon taking an application layer process group out of service, its paired application layer process group, if any exists, takes over performing the functions of the process group that was taken out of service.

Method and apparatus for providing scaleable levels of application

Growing community of inventors

Wheaton, IL, United States of America

James P Schoonover