High availability access to input/output devices in a distributed system

摘要

A system area network computer system architecture is structured as a single system image cluster operating system to offer an opportunity to increase the availability to I/O devices in the system. The computing system comprises a number of processor units coupled to a plurality of input/output (I/O) elements by a routing fabric that provides each of the processor elements with access to any one of the I/O elements. Using a Transparent Network Computing extension to a highly available version of UNIX System V Release 4.2, the system provides a higher degree of availability to I/O devices by providing for the takeover of their controlling entity.