International Business Machines Corporation

Nancy M Schmucki

Brent Allen Carlson

Frederic Lawrence Huss

Richard E Zelenski

Problem ownership and status propagation in a clustered system environment must be coordinated in a way that avoids redundant and/or conflicting recovery efforts. IOP managers which overcome these problems are disclosed. A primary IOP manager is one which has problem ownership for a particular IOP. There is only one primary IOP manager for each IOP. A secondary IOP manager is one which resides upon a computer system that shares the resources of a particular IOP or IOPs, but nevertheless does not have problem ownership for that particular IOP(s). There are one or more secondary IOP managers for a given IOP. When a primary IOP manager is informed of a problem in a device attached to a shared IOP, it updates resident system management information to indicate the new status of the subject device, informs its local system management of the problem so that corrective actions may be taken, and sends the status information to the secondary IOP managers via the IOP itself. When a secondary IOP manager is informed of a problem with a device attached to a shared IOP, it updates system management information to indicate the new status of the subject device and sends the status information to the primary IOP manager and other secondary IOP managers via the IOP itself. The secondary IOP manager does not, however, inform its local system management that corrective actions are required.

Distributed device status in a clustered system environment

A peer to peer connection authorizer is described. The connection authorizer involves three different entities: a system authorizer mechanism, a client connection manager, and a server connection manager. The system authorizer resides on the main or primary CPU while the client and server connection managers reside on individual IOPs. To obtain information required by a user and/or an application program, the client connection manager issues a request to the system authorizer. When the system authorizer receives the request, it first verifies that the client device is who it claims to be. If the system authorizer determines that the client device should be allowed to access the requested information, it then sends a token to the server device and a copy of the same token to the client device. Upon receipt of the token copy from the system authorizer, the client connection manager packages the token copy into a message that it sends to the server device. When the server connection manager receives the message from the client device, it compares the token copy to the token it received from the system authorizer. If the tokens match, the server connection manager responds to the client device and the connection is established.

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Nancy M Schmucki