Patent ID: 6249879
Filing Date: 2001-06-19
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method for transparent failover of a root filesystem made unavailable by the failure of an active server node on which the root filesystem is mounted within a computer cluster having a number of other nodes, the method comprising the steps of:placing all application processes currently performing any operations requiring access to the root filesystem in an interruptable sleep state;mounting the root filesystem within a standby server node in the computer cluster;creating a server instance associated with the root filesystem and re-associating the server instance with each of the other nodes in the computer cluster;awakening the application processes placed in an interruptable sleep state and making the root filesystem available on a read-only basis to each of these application processes;checking the integrity of the root filesystem;completing the application processes interrupted by the failure of the active server node; andmaking the root filesystem available within the computer cluster on a read-write basis to new application processes.