Patent ID: 7870258
Filing Date: 2011-01-11
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. In a distributed computing system comprising a server cluster and a client computer, wherein the server cluster includes a first server and a second server, and wherein the client computer includes a client application, a cache, and a client-side network access module (NAM) by which the client application communicates with the server cluster, a method for providing seamless fail-over connectivity between the client computer and the server cluster, the method comprising: receiving, at the client-side NAM, a request from the client application comprising a server name and a cluster name of the server cluster; sending, by the client-side NAM, a first Server Resolution Protocol request in user datagram protocol (UDP) to the server cluster requesting first connection information for a server associated with the server name; receiving, at the client-side NAM, a first Server Resolution Protocol reply comprising the connection information of the first server, wherein the connection information of the first server comprises a port number for a Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) port of the first server; establishing, by the client-side NAM, a first connection between the client application and the VIA port of the first server in the server cluster using a VIA protocol; providing, by the client-side NAM, seamless fail-over connectivity from the first server to the second sever in the server cluster in a manner transparent to the client application, when the server cluster automatically switches operation from the first server to the second server, wherein providing seamless fail-over connectivity by the client-side NAM comprises: wherein the server cluster does not provide fail-over support to re-direct a request from the client application from the first server to the second server when the server cluster automatically switches operation from the first server to the second server.