Patent ID: 8495413
Filing Date: 2013-07-23
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for providing a computing environment in a computing system, the apparatus comprising: a first node capable of supporting a production computing environment and having a first disk storage controlled by a first operating system and a SAIL kernel disk controlled by a first SAIL kernel, wherein the first operating system cannot access the first SAIL kernel disk and the first SAIL kernel cannot access the first disk storage; a second node capable of supporting a second operational computing environment, independent of the production computing environment, and having second disk storage controlled by a second operating system and a SAIL kernel disk controlled by a second SAIL kernel, wherein the second operating system cannot access the second SAIL kernel disk and the second SAIL kernel cannot access the second disk storage, and wherein the second node cannot access the first SAIL kernel disk and the first node cannot access the second SAIL kernel disk; an operations server that manages the first and second node and that can switch the production computing environment from the first node to the second node; and a communications link between the first node, the second node, and the operations server; wherein the operations server can cause the second node can take over the production computing environment from the first node upon a failure of the first node by providing the second node with access to the first disk storage and rebooting the second node from the first disk storage.