Terminal High Availability via Heartbeat-Triggered Edge Failover
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current edge computing systems lack mechanisms to automatically react to faults and ensure uninterrupted operation, particularly for artificial intelligence models, leading to potential crashes and loss of availability.
Innovation Solution
A system architecture that uses a storage to store identifiers for backup devices, monitors device operation with heartbeat signals, and automatically switches to a backup device upon detecting a fault, ensuring seamless operation by maintaining model and communication configuration continuity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If edge computing systems are deployed without failover mechanisms, then device complexity and resource usage are reduced, but system reliability deteriorates due to crashes and loss of availability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-configuring backup edge devices with model and communication configuration data before failures occur. The monitoring device continuously monitors heartbeat signals and maintains a ready-to-use backup configuration in the store, so that when a failure is detected, the backup device can immediately take over without requiring complex real-time configuration or manual intervention.
Solution Approach 2:
The monitoring device serves as an intermediary that coordinates between edge devices and backup mechanisms. It receives heartbeat signals from edge devices, detects failures, and triggers the failover process by transmitting stored model and communication configuration data to the appropriate backup device, thereby simplifying the overall system architecture while ensuring reliability.
2Reliability
If manual commissioning and cluster management are implemented to ensure high availability, then system reliability improves, but ease of operation deteriorates due to time-consuming commissioning and complex management requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service through automated failover mechanisms. When the monitoring device detects a failure via missing heartbeat signals, it automatically transmits the appropriate model and communication configuration data from the store to a backup device, which then autonomously takes over operation. This eliminates the need for manual commissioning or intervention during failures, significantly improving ease of operation while maintaining high availability.
3Reliability
If additional hardware is added to create redundant backup systems, then system reliability improves, but use of energy and resource consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses copying by storing model and communication configuration data in a centralized store accessible to backup devices. Instead of maintaining full hardware redundancy with identical computational resources, the system creates virtual copies of the necessary operational data, allowing backup devices to assume functionality on-demand. This reduces energy consumption while ensuring reliability through data-based redundancy rather than full hardware duplication.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for operating a terminal with high availability in a network, where a memory stores an identifier, for a backup device of a first edge device, which relates to a second edge device, stores a model for operating the terminal and stores information about the connection configuration between the first and second edge devices, the monitoring device and the terminal, where the first edge device periodically sends a signal about its correct operation, the signal is received by the monitoring device, and detection of an absent or erroneous signal results in an associated error device being detected, and the model and the connection configuration of the error device being transferred from the memory to a substitute device, the substitute device being determined via the identifier associated with the absent or erroneous signal, and the substitute device operating the terminal using the received model and the connection configuration.