Logical Scalable Units for Stateful Application Server Scaling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Stateful application servers in telecommunications networks, such as policy and charging application servers, face challenges in scaling linearly with existing scalable computing resources due to the need for maintaining session stores and ensuring high availability, which limits their ability to adapt to changing traffic demands.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that dynamically adds or removes logical scalable units, each comprising a multiprocessor computing system with virtualized data and control plane components, to adjust throughput capacity in response to traffic changes, allowing for elastic scaling of stateful application servers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If stateful application servers use existing scalable computing resources, then throughput capacity can be increased, but linear scaling is not achieved due to session store maintenance requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments stateful application servers into independent stateful service instances, each with its own session store. This segmentation enables horizontal scaling by allowing individual instances to be added or removed without affecting others, achieving linear scalability while maintaining high throughput capacity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic provisioning and deprovisioning of stateful service instances based on real-time traffic demand. The system can dynamically add instances during peak demand and remove them during low demand periods, enabling elastic scaling that adapts to changing traffic patterns while maintaining optimal throughput.
2Reliability
If redundancy is added to ensure high availability, then reliability improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements local redundancy at the instance level, where each stateful service instance maintains its own session store and redundancy configuration. This localized approach ensures high availability without requiring complex centralized redundancy management, as each instance independently manages its own failover and redundancy requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs self-service mechanisms where stateful service instances automatically monitor their own health status, perform failover when needed, and manage their redundancy configurations without external intervention. This automation reduces operational complexity while maintaining high availability through continuous self-monitoring and self-healing capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
The performance of a scalable computing environment in a telecommunication network may be improved by configuring a server computing system to monitor a level of traffic throughput within the telecommunication network to determine whether an increase in throughput capacity is needed or a decrease in throughput capacity is acceptable, and increasing a throughput capacity of the telecommunication network when an increase in throughput capacity is needed by adding a logical scalable unit to the telecommunication network. The logical scalable unit may including a minimum combination of logical components required to provide in a single multiprocessor system a complete set of telecommunication functionalities for a subset of users in the telecommunication network.