METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING DEVICE REDUNDANCY IN A FAULT-TOLERANT SYSTEM

摘要

Method and apparatus for facilitating device redundancy in a fault tolerant system is described. One aspect of the invention relates to common redundancy for a set of devices in a redundancy group. Each of the devices is in either an active role or a standby role. Virtual configurations for the devices are stored in a management system. Advertisements are periodically sent from each of the devices in the active role to each of the devices in the redundancy group. Each of the advertisements includes a configuration sequence number. An update in one of the virtual configurations is announced by incrementing the configuration sequence number in at least one of the advertisements. An updated virtual configuration is obtained at each of the devices in the standby role from the management system in response to detecting the configuration sequence number as incremented in the at least one advertisement.