Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Mingdong Shang

David Matthew Kruse

Mathew George

James T Pinkerton

Roopesh C Battepati

Daniel Edward Lovinger

Thomas Ewan Jolly

Qibo Zhu

Paul R Swan

Tom Jolly

Thomas E Jolly

Systems and methods are disclosed for clients and servers operating in a scaled cluster environment. Efficiencies are introduced to the process of connecting a client to a clustered environment by providing the client with the ability to attempt a connection with multiple servers in parallel. Servers operating the in the clustered environment are also capable of providing persistent storage of file handles and other state information. Ownership of the state information and persistent handles may be transferred between servers, thereby providing clients with the opportunity to move from one server to another while maintaining access to resources in the clustered environment.

SMB2 scaleout

Described are embodiments directed at persistent handles that are used to retain state across network failures and server failovers. Persistent handles are requested by a client after a session has been established with a file server. The request for the persistent handle includes a handle identifier generated by the client. The server uses the handle identifier to associate with state information. When there is a network failure or a server failover, and a reconnection to the client, the handle identifier is used to identify replayed requests that if replayed would create an inconsistent state on the server. The replayed requests are then appropriately handled.

Transparent failover

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Mingdong Shang