Patent ID: 8825882

Claim:
A fault-tolerant computer system for providing scalable data processing and storage services to a client from a plurality of storage resources, comprising: a plurality of identical resources interface modules connected to the storage resources; a plurality of identical access interface modules which receive requests for service from the client and select a subset of the plurality of resource interface modules to provide the requested service and distribute the workload across the plurality of storage resources; and a switch for temporarily connecting one of the plurality of access interface modules to the selected subset of the plurality of resource interface modules for providing the service to the client, the switch being constructed in two identical halves, each switch half is enabled to be connected to each of the resource interface modules and to each of the access interface modules so that each switch half supports a full data bandwidth between all pairs of modules, the two switch halves being interconnected so that a failure in one switch does not make the computer system inoperative.