Compaq Computer Corporation, Inc.

Avaya Technology LLC

Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.p.

Yuan Sylvia Tien

Charles C Young

Thomas James Davidson

Stephen M Sanderson

Irma De Leon

Jill A Jones

Glen W Gordon

Luiz A Laranjeira

Andrew Thomas Busey

George Currie

Govind Balakrishnan

Peter Bunyan

Peter Novosel

Kirschen Alcyone Seah

Dwight M Moore

Rickey E Chevrie

Brett Morrison

Techniques using process-pair protection of complex applications are disclosed which provide fast and stateful application failover.

Process pair protection for complex applications

A method and apparatus for providing process-pair protection to complex applications is provided. The apparatus of the present invention includes a process-pair manager or PPM. The PPM is replicated so that a respective PPM is deployed on each of two computer systems. Each computer system also hosts a watchdog process that monitors and restarts the PPM in case of PPM failures. Each PPM communicates with a respective instance of an application. The application instances may include one or more processes along with associated resources. During normal operation the primary application provides service and periodically checkpoints its state to the backup application. The backup application functions in a standby mode. The two PPMs communicate with each other and exchange messages as state changes occur. The apparatus also includes in each computer system a node watcher that is the PPM of failures of the remote computer system. This way, each monitor the state of the other application instance and the health of the computer system on which it is resident. If a failure of the primary application or of the computer system where it runs is detected, the PPM managing the backup application takes steps to cause its instance of the application to become primary. The failover operation is faster (between 5 and 20 seconds) than corresponding operations provided by other existing methods (between one and 40 minutes depending on the application initialization time) because the backup application does not need to be started and initialized to become primary. The failover is stateful because the backup application receives periodic updates of the state of the primary application.

Method and apparatus for providing process pair protection for complex applications

A network-based customer interface allows a customer to receive automated information from a variety of data sources, or databases, including a knowledge base and frequently asked question database. The data sources are updated based on recording ongoing customer queries and transactions with the database. The updates can be reviewed before they are used to update the data sources. Customer authentication is performed so that the customer can be given an elevated level of service and so that any prior customer sessions can be used to help human agents know about the customer's situation.

Web response unit including computer network based communication

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Yuan Sylvia Tien