Facilitating communications with clustered servers
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsMichael A. Rothman, Vincent J. Zimmer
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A plurality of servers arranged in a cluster, such as a plurality of blade servers, may communicate with a network over a first communication path. The servers may also communicate with each other over another communication path such as an out-of-band channel. Using the out-of-band channel, a server that is having a communication or a software failure may communication with other blade servers using the out-of-band channel. The other blade servers may act as a proxy for the server with a problem, enabling the proxy to communicate on behalf of the server having a communication problem. As a result, useful computational work may be obtained in many cases from servers that would otherwise be taken off-line.
Claims21
A method comprising:
- enabling communications over a first path by each of a plurality of blade servers in a rack of blade servers including a first and a second blade server;
- enabling communications between the servers over an out-of-band channel;
- enabling the first blade server to communicate with a boot server, not in said rack, to facilitate booting of said second blade server in said rack, said second blade server unable to communicate with said boot server, said first blade server triggered to communicate with said boot server in response to a failure of the second blade server to communicate;
- and
- enabling said boot server to reboot said second blade server in response to a request from said first blade server.
An article comprising a medium storing instructions that, if executed, enable a processor-based system to:
- enable communications over a first path by each of a plurality of blade servers in a rack of blade servers including a first and a second blade server;
- enable communications between the servers over an out-of-band channel;
- enable the first blade server to communicate with a boot server not in said rack to facilitate booting of said second blade server in said rack, said second blade server unable to communicate with said boot server, said first blade server triggered to communicate with said boot server in response to a failure of the second blade server to communicate;
- and
- enabling said boot server to reboot said second blade server in response to a request from said first blade server.
A server cluster comprising:
- a rack including at least a first and a second blade server;
- an out-of-band back plane coupled to each of said servers;
- said servers each having a connection to an external network separate from said out-of-band back plane;
- and
- a storage coupled to said blade servers storing instructions that, if executed, enable said blade servers to communicate over said back plane when said connection to said external network is disabled, said storage further storing instructions to enable the first blade server to communicate with a boot server, not in said rack, to facilitate booting of said second blade server in said rack, said second blade server unable to communicate with said boot server, said first blade server triggered to communication with said boot server in response to a failure of the second blade server to communicate and enabling said boot server to reboot said second blade server in response to a request from said first blade server.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.