Application protection through a combined functionality failure manager

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10509705-B2
Application number	US-201113289974-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 4, 2011
Priority date	Nov 4, 2011
Publication date	Dec 17, 2019
Grant date	Dec 17, 2019

Abstract

A method for providing application functionality protection. The method includes accessing a distributed computer system having a cluster including a plurality of nodes, and receiving an indication of an application failure. The method further includes attempting to restore the application through a number of application restart attempts, and receiving an indication that the restart attempts have not restored the application. An image history is then accessed to obtain a last known good point in time image of the application. The application is restored in accordance with the last known good point in time image.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for providing application functionality protection by integrated control of cluster failover processes and cluster backup processes, comprising:
accessing a distributed computer system having a cluster including a plurality of nodes;
receiving, at a failure manager having combined access to failover functionality and backup functionality, an indication of an application failure on a first node;
attempting, by the failure manager, to restore the application through a preconfigured number of application restart attempts;
determining, by the failure manager, that application restart attempts have failed;
selecting, by the failure manager, in response to the determination, at least one secondary restart attempt to perform based on a configured policy;
performing the at least one secondary restart attempt to restore application functionality comprising at least one of:
restarting a machine hosting the application; and
failing over to a second node;

receiving, by the failure manager, an indication that the at least one secondary restart attempt has not restored the application;
accessing, by the failure manager, a backup image history to obtain a last known good point in time backup image of the application, wherein the backup image history includes at least two prior backup images; and
restoring, by the failure manger, the application in accordance with the last known good point in time backup image, wherein the application is restored using a standby virtual machine provisioned from the last known good point in time backup image.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the backup image history comprises a plurality of point in time snapshots.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein a user indication is required to proceed with restoration with the last known good point in time backup image.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the distributed computer system comprises a plurality of clusters of nodes.

5. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon, computer executable instructions that, if executed by a computer system cause the computer system to perform a method for providing application functionality protection by integrated control of cluster failover processes and cluster backup processes, comprising:
accessing, by the failure manager, a distributed computer system having a cluster including a plurality of nodes;
receiving, by the failure manager, an indication of an application failure on a first of the plurality of nodes at a failure manager having combined access to failover functionality and backup functionality;
attempting, by the failure manager, to restore the application through a preconfigured number of application restart attempts;
determining, by the failure manager, that the application restart attempts have failed;
selecting, by the failure manager, in response to the determination, the at least one secondary restart attempt to perform based on a configured policy;
performing at least one secondary restart attempt to restore application functionality comprising at least one of:
restarting a machine hosting the application; and
failing over to a second node;

receiving, by the failure manager, an indication that the at least one secondary restart attempt has not restored the application;
accessing, by the failure manager, a backup image history to obtain a last known good point in time backup image of the application, wherein the backup image history includes at least two prior backup images; and
restoring, by the failure manager, the application in accordance with the last known good point in time backup image, wherein the application is restored using a standby virtual machine provisioned from the last known good point in time backup image.

6. The computer readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the restart attempts include at least one restart of the node machine.

7. The computer readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the backup “image history comprises a plurality of point in time snapshots.

8. The computer readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein a user indication is required to proceed with restoration with the last known good point in time backup image.

9. The computer readable storage medium of claim 5 , wherein the distributed computer system comprises a plurality of clusters of nodes.

10. A server computer system, comprising:
a computer system having a processor coupled to a computer readable storage media and executing computer readable code which causes the computer system to implement a failure manager having combined access to failover functionality and backup functionality to integrate control of cluster failover and cluster backup by:
accessing, by the failure manager, a distributed computer system having a cluster including a plurality of nodes;
receiving, by the failure manager, an indication of an application failure on a first node;
attempting, by the failure manager, to restore the application through a number of application restart attempts;
determining, by the failure manager, that application restart attempts have failed;
selecting by the failure manager, in response to the determination, the at least one secondary restart attempt to perform based on a configured policy;
performing at least one secondary restart attempt to restore application functionality comprising at least one of:
restarting a machine hosting the application; and
failing over to a second node;

receiving, by the failure manager, an indication that the at least one secondary restart attempt has not restored the application;
accessing, by the failure manager, a backup image history to obtain a last known good point in time backup image of the application, wherein the backup image history includes at least two prior backup images; and
restoring, by the failure manager, the application in accordance with the last known good point in time backup image, wherein the application is restored using a standby virtual machine provisioned from the last known good point in time backup image.

11. The server computer system of claim 10 , wherein the backup image history comprises a plurality of point in time snapshots.

12. The server computer system of claim 10 , wherein a user indication is required to proceed with restoration with the last known good point in time backup image.

13. The server computer system of claim 10 , wherein restoring the application includes restoring a virtual machine to the last known good point in time backup image.

14. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining that restoring the application in accordance with the last known good point in time backup image has failed and
restoring to a point in time of a backup image prior to the last known good point in time backup image.

Assignees

• Sridharan Srineet
• Jain Vikas
• Maradani Phani Karthik
• Ahmad Jahangir
• Veritas Technologies Llc

Inventors

• Sridharan Srineet
• Jain Vikas
• Maradani Phani Karthik
• Ahmad Jahangir

Classifications

• G06F11/2023

  Failover techniques · CPC title

• G06F11/0793

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title

• G06F11/1469

  Backup restoration techniques · CPC title

• G06F11/1482 Primary

  using middleware or operating system [OS] functionalities · CPC title

• G06F11/2035

  without idle spare hardware · CPC title