Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd.

Stratus Technologies Ireland Ltd.

Stratus Computer, Inc.

Steven Michael Haid

Lei Cao

Simon P Graham

Jeffrey S Somers

John W Edwards, Jr

John Rogers MacLeod

Wendy J McNaughton

Daniel J Lussier

Stephen J Wark

Angel L Pagan

Nathaniel Horwitch Dailey

Aaron Tyrone Smith

David A Utter

Timothy Wegner

Michael Egan

Charles J Horvath

Dan Lussier

Robert Manchek

Kimball A Murray

Paul H Hansen

Gregory S LeBlanc

Laurie E Friedman

Susan J Lo Verso

Beverly Brown

John Macleod

Charles Horvath

Tim Wegner

In part, in one aspect, the disclosure relates to a first computer system including a first processor and first memory, a first IO storage subsystem including a first switch configured for one or more first storage devices, a first IO non-storage subsystem including a first which configured for one or more first non-storage devices, a second compute system including a second processor and second memory, a second storage IO subsystem including a second switch configured for one or more second storage devices, a second IO non-storage subsystem including a second switch configured for one or more second non-storage devices and a midplane including a power connector, a processor side and an IO side, wherein the processing side includes connectors in electrical communication with the computer systems, the IO side includes connectors in electrical communication with the storage and non-storage subsystems.

Cost reduced high reliability fault tolerant computer architecture

In part, the disclosure relates to systems and methods to rapidly copy the computer operating system, drivers and applications from a source computer to a target computer using a duplication engine. Once the copy is complete the source computer will resume execution, and the target computer will first alter its configuration (also referred to as a role or personality) and then resume execution conforming to its new configuration as indicated by a profile stored in protected or specialized memory. The profile can be value, a file, or other memory structure and is protected in the sense that the profile (and or the region of memory where it is stored) must not be overwritten by a state transfer from the source computer to the target computer.

Computer duplication and configuration management systems and methods

A method and apparatus of performing fault tolerance in a fault tolerant computer system comprising: a primary node having a primary node processor; a secondary node having a secondary node processor, each node further comprising a respective memory; a respective checkpoint shim; each of the primary and secondary node further comprising: a respective non-virtual operating system (OS), the non-virtual OS comprising a respective; network driver; storage driver; and checkpoint engine; the method comprising the steps of: acting upon a request from a client by the respective OS of the primary and the secondary node, comparing the result obtained by the OS of the primary node and the secondary node by the network driver of the primary node for similarity, and if the comparison of indicates similarity less than a predetermined amount, the primary node network driver informs the primary node checkpoint engine to begin a checkpoint process.

Operating system-based systems and method of achieving fault tolerance

The disclosure relates to a method of checkpointing. The method may include determining, by the primary computer, when to initiate a checkpoint point operation; dividing, at the primary computer, checkpoint data into two or more groups, wherein each group includes one or more pages of memory; transmitting a first group to the secondary computer; upon receiving, by the secondary computer, the first group, correlating memory pages in the first group with pages in memory on the secondary computer; determining, at the secondary computer, which bytes of memory pages of the first group differ from the correlated pages stored in memory in the secondary computer; and applying data from the first group by swapping differences between the memory pages of the first group and the correlated memory pages stored in the secondary computer. Where at least some of these multiple operations are performed in parallel during a subset of the overall checkpoint operation. The simultaneous performance of various memory manage checkpoint operations is advantageous in various fault tolerant systems. The differences may be N-byte differences such as 8-byte differences.

Systems and methods for applying checkpoints on a secondary computer in parallel with transmission

A checkpointing method in a network device fault tolerant system using virtual machines. In one embodiment, the network device has an input port, an output port, an active virtual machine and a standby virtual machine, a network application on the active virtual machine which manipulates data present on the input port and transmits the manipulated data from the output port; a checkpoint engine on the active virtual machine; and an interface agent, on the active virtual machine, having callable functions to move data from the input port to the output port. The method includes the steps of determining, by the checkpoint engine, that a checkpoint is required; requesting by the checkpoint engine that the interface agent quiescent itself; returning, by the interface agent to the network application, an indicator that no packets are available regardless of whether or not packets are arriving at the input port.

Method and apparatus for performing checkpointing on a network device

A method of transferring memory from an active to a standby memory in an FT Server system. The method includes the steps of: reserving a portion of memory using BIOS; loading and initializing an FT Kernel Mode Driver; loading and initializing an FT Virtual Machine Manager (FTVMM) including the Second Level Address Translation table SLAT into the reserved memory. In another embodiment, the method includes tracking memory accesses using the FTVMM's SLAT in Reserved Memory and tracking 'L' Guest memory accesses by tracking the current Guest's SLAT and intercepting the Hypervisor's writes to the SLAT. In yet another embodiment, the method includes entering Brownout by collecting the D-Bits; invalidating the processor's cached SLAT translation entries, and copying the dirtied pages from the active memory to memory in the second Subsystem. In one embodiment, the method includes entering Blackout and moving the final dirty pages from active to the mirror memory.

Method for dirty-page tracking and full memory mirroring redundancy in a fault-tolerant server

In part, the invention relates to a system and method for writing checkpointing data to a computer having a standby virtual machine for each checkpointed component on a computer having an active virtual machine. In one embodiment, the checkpointing data is processed on a per virtual machine basis. This is performed in a way that allows checkpointing data packets from multiple sources to be transferred asynchronously, subsequently reassembled into a coherent checkpoint message, and applied asynchronously.

System and method for writing checkpointing data

A system is provided for rapidly synchronizing two or more processing elements in a fault-tolerant computing system. Embodiments of this system allow for the rapid synchronization of two processing elements through partial copies of the contents of memory associate with each processing element.

Systems and methods for maintaining lock step operation

A fault-tolerant computer system comprises a plurality of processing nodes and a plurality of storage nodes interconnected by a network. The processing nodes perform processing operations in connection with user-generated processing requests. The processing nodes, in connection with processing a processing request, generate storage and retrieval requests for transmission to the storage node to enable storage of data thereon and retrieval of data therefrom. The storage nodes store data in at least one replicated partition group comprising a plurality of replicated partitions distributed across the storage nodes. A storage node, on receiving a retrieval request from a processing node provide the requested data to the processing node. In addition, on receiving a storage request from a processing node, a storage node initiates an update operation to update all of the replicated partitions in the replicated partition group. Following correction of a malfunction or failure of a storage node, partitions maintained by the malfunctioning or failed storage node can be recovered by use of the other members of the replicated partition group.

Distributed fault tolerant digital data storage subsystem for fault

Growing community of inventors

Bolton, MA, United States of America

Steven Michael Haid