The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 18, 2012
Filed:
Jul. 24, 2008
Phillip G. Ezolt, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Jeffrey E. Semke, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Phillip G. Ezolt, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Jeffrey E. Semke, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
NetApp, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
DNS name resolution is integrated into each node in a network storage cluster, to allow load balancing of network addresses, using a weighted random distribution to resolve DNS requests. A node in the cluster gathers statistics on utilization of resources, such as CPU utilization and throughput, on nodes in the cluster and distributes those statistics to all other nodes. Each node uses the same algorithm to generate weights for the various IP addresses of the cluster, based on the statistics distributed to it. The weights are used to generate a weighted list of available network addresses. In response to a DNS request, a DNS in a given node randomly indexes into the weighted address list to resolve requests to a network address. The weights are chosen so that the DNS is likely to pick an IP address which has a low load, to balance port and node usage over time.