Load balancing when replicating account data

US8886796B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Microsoft Corporation · US

Inventors

• Bradley Gene Calder · Bellevue, US
• Niranjan Nilakantan · Redmond, US
• Shashwat Srivastav · Seattle, US
• Jiesheng Wu · Redmond, US
• Abdul Rafay Abbasi · Redmond, US
• Shane Mainali · Duvall, US
• Padmanabha Chakravarthy Uddaraju · Bellevue, US
• Arild E. Skjolsvold · Kenmore, US
• Hemal Khatri · Redmond, US
• Ju Wang · Redmond, US

Key dates

• Filing date: May 23, 2011
• Grant date: Nov 11, 2014
• Expiry date: Sep 25, 2031

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F2206/1012
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention relate to invoking and managing load-balancing operation(s) applied to partitions within a distributed computing environment, where each partition represents a key range of data for a storage account. The partitions affected by the load-balancing operation(s) are source partitions hosted on a primary storage stamp and/or destination partitions hosted on a secondary storage stamp, where the primary and secondary storage stamps are located in geographically distinct areas and are equipped to replicate the storage account's data therebetween. The load-balancing operation(s) include splitting partitions into child partitions upon detecting an increased workload as a result of active replication, merging partitions to form parent partitions upon detecting a reduction in workload as a result of decreased processing-related resource consumption, or offloading partitions based on resource consumption. A service within a partition layer of the storage stamps is responsible for determining when to invoke these load-balancing operation(s).