Service providing system

摘要

In a system with a terminal sending a request, when a load distributing unit distributes the request to many service providing apparatuses, the load distributing unit becomes a bottleneck of performance and/or a single point of failure. When the load is distributed to the service providing apparatuses without using the load distributing unit, a particular function is required on the terminal side to appropriately select one of apparatuses. A name resolution unit including an address group management table with IP addresses to select, for a request from a terminal, an address from the table to return the address to the terminal and a plurality of service providing apparatuses to which at least zero IP address selected from the table is allocated without duplication are arranged such that each service providing apparatus is allocated with IP addresses according to processing performance thereof, thereby conducting appropriate load distribution.

主权项

1. A service providing system comprising:
a plurality of service providing apparatuses and at least one name resolution unit, one of the service providing apparatuses responding to a service request from a terminal, wherein the name resolution unit is configured to manage an address group including n IP addresses allocated to a service providing apparatus group including k service providing apparatuses (n is equal to or greater than k) and comprises a name resolution request processing section for selecting, in response to the service request from the terminal, one IP address from the address group managed by the name resolution unit, to thereby make a response, each of the service providing apparatuses is allocated with m IP addresses (m is equal to or more than zero) selected from the n IP addresses managed by the name resolution unit, without duplication with respect to any other one of the service providing apparatuses, and comprises: a terminal request processing section configured to provide, based on the response to the name resolution request, a service to the service request from the terminal, and a load distributing function section configured to conduct load distribution of a load between the service providing apparatus and any one other of the service providing apparatuses, wherein each of the plurality of the service providing apparatuses is configured to be a monitor-target service providing apparatus whose load is monitored by any one other of the service providing apparatuses as a monitoring service providing apparatus; and the load distributing function section of the monitoring service providing apparatus is configured to move, when a high load is imposed on the monitor-target service providing apparatus, allocation of IP addresses from the monitor-target service providing apparatus to the monitoring service providing apparatus.