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ZAP - A system for migrating legacy and networked applications

Summary

Lead Inventors: Jason Nieh, Ph.D., Dinesh K SubhravetiProblem or Unmet Need:Process migration, the ability to transfer a process from one computing device to another is a useful facility in distributed computing environments. Its benefits include fault resilience, data access locality, improved system response time, dynamic load balancing, and improved service availability and administration. Functional implementation however is hindered by the lack of legacy application support, the need for significant changes to existing operating systems, the dependency on the machine from which the process has migrated, and computational overhead costs. This technology represents a system for transparent migration of legacy and networked applications that avoids these limitations, realizing the full potential of process migration. This technology implements a thin virtualization layer on top of existing operating systems which permits the introduction of 'pods,' groups of processes with a private namespace which are given a consistent virtualized view of the system. This decouples processes in pods from dependencies on the host operating system and protects them from interference with other local system processes. A checkpoint-restart mechanism integrated into the virtualization layer allows pods to migrate and restart on a new system without leaving behind any residual data and while preserving network connections.

Technology Benefits

Compatible with existing operating systems; little modification is required for implementation Supports migration of networked applications while preserving open network connections Does not leave behind residual data or processes once pods are migrated to a new host Requires very low computational overhead

Technology Application

Robust process migration in a distributed computing environment In response to DoS attacks: Migrate authenticated processes or traffic off of faulty hosts while maintaining open network connections Fast migration of user sessions between computing devices and platforms

Detailed Technology Description

This technology implements a thin virtualization layer on top of existing operating systems which permits the introduction of 'pods,' groups of processes with a private namespace which are given a consistent virtualized view of the system. This...

*Abstract

None

*Inquiry

Calvin Chu Columbia Technology Ventures Tel: (212) 854-8444 Email: TechTransfer@columbia.edu

*IR

M03-058

*Principal Investigator

*Publications

The Design and Implementation of Zap: A System for Migrating Computing Environments. Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, Boston, MA, December 2002.

*Web Links

USPTO_1: US20070214505A1USPTO_2: US20070244962A1USPTO_3: US20070233880A1USPTO_4: US20070245334A1

Country/Region

USA