Patent ID: 7543069

Claim:
A method of maintaining session state affinity in a workload balancing system comprising at least one hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) routing server and a plurality of application servers comprising: maintaining backup session state information for a first session between a user and a first application server of the plurality of application servers, wherein; the backup session state information is maintained at a designated one application server or a subset of less than all of the plurality of applications servers, different from the first application server; and each one of the plurality of application servers is executed on an associated data processing system; detecting the unavailability of the first application server by at least one of the plurality of application servers other than the first application server; determining a second application server of the plurality of application servers that continues the first session by; preparing by a particular one of the plurality of application servers, a response that is routed to a selected HTTP routing server executed on an associated data processing system, where the response is associated with a second session that is different from the first session; identifying the second application server designated to take over the first session and the first session by the particular one of the plurality of application servers responsive to detecting the unavailability of the first application server; incorporating the identification of the second application server and the first session in the response associated with a second session prepared by the particular one of the plurality of application servers; and sending the response associated with the second session to the selected HTTP routing server; wherein: the identification of the second application server and the first session are received at the selected HTTP routing server by stripping the identification of the second server from the response associated with the second session; the response associated with the second session, which has been stripped of the identification of the second application server and the first session, is forwarded by the selected HTTP routing server to its recipient; and selected HTTP routing server is reconfigured to route communications associated with the first session to the second application server responsive to receiving the identification of the second application server so that backup session state information maintained at the second application server is used to continue the first session from the first application server at the second application server.