Method and system for client/server and peer-to-peer disk imaging

Abstract

A method and system for imaging data between two or more digital computers across a computer network is described, where the digital computers transfer data in a peer-to-peer mode and/or a client/server mode upon command of the operator. This invention address the problem of managing, updating and installing executable software, such as operating systems, utilities and application software packages on a large number of networked computer systems. By using this invention properly, a system operator can transfer data stored on a single computer system to all or some of the computer system connected to the first system over a computer network and can do so without expensive electronic server equipment. Moreover, this invention provides the capability of transferring data as files, sectors or cylinders of disk media, thereby permitting a single operator to, through a generally automated procedure, simultaneously install new system software, configuration files and executive files on many computers. This invention provides an important improvement in the operation, maintenance and control of large computer networks, although it applies and works equally well in small network applications. In its best mode of operation this invention is performed on standard digital computer systems through the use of special purpose computer software.

Claims

We claim:

1. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network the method steps comprising:

(A) networking a master computer to a first slave computer and a second slave;

(B) initiating the imaging of data on said master computer; and

(C) responding to the requests for data imaging from said master computer on said first slave computer and said second slave computer.

2. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network, as recited in claim 1, where said initiating the imaging of data step further comprises the steps of:

(1) determining the type of imaging which is desired between the computer systems;

(2) transferring the image data between said slave computer and said master computer; and

(3) broadcasting the transferred image data from a single master computer system to more than one slave computer system.

3. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network, as recited in claim 1, wherein said initiating the imaging of data step further comprises the steps of:

(1) receiving computer system information from said master computer;

(2) transmitting said received computer system information, wherein said computer system information includes handshaking information, to said master computer;

(3) downloading said transferred image data from said master computer and to said slave computer and for storing the image data in a digital computer system; and

(4) handling errors incurred in the downloading of the image data from said master computer.

4. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network, as recited in claim 2, wherein said determining the type of imaging step which is desired between the computer systems, further comprises the steps of:

(a) processing command line information from the system operator; and

(b) processing menu information for gathering necessary information from the system operator and the digital computer systems.

5. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network, as recited in claim 2, wherein said transferring image data between said slave computer and said master computer step, further comprises the steps of:

(a) opening a file containing the data to be imaged;

(b) writing an image header for recording the image header data;

(c) retrieving image data into a computer system; and

(d) minimizing the data storage requirements of the retrieved image data.

6. A method for imaging data between two or more digital computer systems across a computer network, as recited in claim 2, wherein said broadcasting the transferred image data step, further comprises the steps of:

(a) packaging digital computer system sector data; and

(b) sending said packaged digital computer system sector data across a network to one or more digital computer systems.

7. A system for performing peer-to-peer imaging of information stored in a digital computer storage media across a digital computer network comprising:

(A) a first digital computer system having a first disk drive;

(B) a second digital computer system having a second disk drive and a third digital computer system having a third disk drive;

(C) a network communication device electrically connecting said first digital computer system to said second digital computer system; and

(D) a means for simultaneously imaging data stored on said first digital computer system to said second digital computer system and said third digital computer system thereby duplicating all data stored on said first disk drive of said first digital computer system to said second disk drive on said second digital computer system and to said third disk drive on said third digital computer system.

8. A system for performing peer-to-peer imaging of information stored in a digital computer storage media across a digital computer network, as recited in claim 7, further comprising:

(F) a third digital computer system; and

(G) a means for broadcasting image data stored on said first computer system to said second digital computer system and said third digital computer system.

9. A system for performing peer-to-peer imaging of information stored in a digital computer storage media across a digital computer network, as recited in claim 7, further comprising:

(H) a means for compressing the volume of information to be imaged.

10. A system for performing peer-to-peer imaging of information stored in a digital computer storage media across a digital computer network, as recited in claim 7, wherein said system is operable in a client/server network environment.

11. A system for performing peer-to-peer imaging of information stored in a digital computer storage media across a digital computer network, as recited in claim 7, wherein said system is operable in a network without electronic server hardware.

12. A networked computer system comprising:

(A) a means for initializing variables for use by a software program for performing data imaging on digital computers across a computer network;

(B) a means for selecting the type of imaging of the digital computer data;

(C) a means for uploading to simultaneously transfer digital computer data from one digital computer to two or more other digital computers, wherein each digital computer operates in a peer-to-peer mode;

(D) a means for downloading to receive data from a digital computer to another digital computer; and

(E) a means for error detection and reporting for identifying and reporting any errors that occur during said upload or said download routines.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates to the systems and methods for copying or mirroring the binary data on one computer hard disk drive over a computer network to one or many other computer hard disk drives. More specifically, this invention provides a process or method for installing and/or distributing software from one computer system to one or more other computer systems over a computer network. Furthermore, this invention provides a system for solving the often tedious problems of installing computer software and distributing computer system files to a number of computer systems, providing a mechanism for fast software distribution on networked computers by eliminating the need to use the installation utilities of each application program to install the software package individually on each computer.

2. Description of Related Art

It is commonly known in the related art to transfer computer files from one computer hard disk to another computer hard disk. Similarly, it is well known to transfer files from computer to computer over a computer network. Likewise, computer network vendors have created tool sets, for use in their own labs, to transfer data from a master computer disk drive to an image file on a file server and then to download the data to the target or slave computers. Other existing tools will use the file server to broadcast data from an image file to the target or slave computers simultaneously (in parallel). Examples of these tools have been disclosed at conferences and with customers by Novell, Inc.

This invention has substantial and important advantages over prior known approaches. This invention not only can use a client/server model, it can also use a peer-to-peer model not available with computer network vendor tool sets or prior used disk-to-disk copying. Unlike, prior approaches, this invention can be used without a network file server and still can copy computer data from one computer hard disk to many computer hard disks over a computer network, by using the peer-to-peer mode of operation. Moreover, the peer-to-peer mode of operation provides important advantages in terms of transfer speed and lower cost. The speed advantage is realized by using a one step process rather than the two step process required for the client/server model of operation. In the invention's peer-to-peer mode, the data is distributed from the master computer to the slave computers in a single step. The cost advantage is achieved by not requiring a network file server to accomplish the one to many data imaging. Network file servers are costly to purchase, install and maintain.

For general background art the reader is directed to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,866,664, 4,872,006, 5,249,290, 5,325,527, 5,396,613, 5,421,009, 5,438,671, 5,452,459, 5,459,837, 5,461,721, 5,465,351, 5,491,694, 5,495,611, 5,506,902, 5,513,126, 5,513,314, 5,515,508, 5,515,510, 5,517,645, 5,517,668, 5,522,041, 5,526,490, 5,528,757, 5,537,533, 5,537,585, 5,542,046 each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for the material disclosed therein.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,866,664 discloses an interprocessor message communication synchronization apparatus and method for a plurality of processors connected to a system bus where one processor desiring to send a control signal to another processor, broadcasts an input/output write instruction on the system bus along with the address of the receiving processor and a data field representative of the control signal to be transmitted.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,006 discloses a data transmission system in which data are transmitted among plural stations.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,290 discloses a method of and apparatus for operating a client/server computer network to access shared server resources in response to service requests from client computers connected to the network.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,527 discloses a client/server communication system utilizing a self-generating nodal network wherein the method includes the steps of creating a server nodal network tree which includes the steps of generating a server root node which includes both process steps for communicating to an operating system and service nodes, and process steps for building service nodes which correspond to servers within the client/server system, each service node include both process steps for advertising a service to the server root node and process steps for building a topic node which includes both process steps for accessing a server and process steps for building a job node for storing a job request.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,613 discloses a method for error recovery in client/server distributed processing systems using cascaded servers.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,009 discloses a method for remote installation of software over a computer network, allowing the user to interactively select each remote computer system for software installation, or to provide a file containing a list of all remote computer systems.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,671 discloses a two-computer system and method where data is transferred between the computers as complete disk images rather than as files.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,459 discloses a method and apparatus for allocating server access in a distributed computing environment using a scheduling process.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,459,837 discloses a method and system for monitoring the performance of servers across a network and for suggesting an appropriate server to a client requesting a service, wherein a plurality of probes are placed in various clients in the network by a Broker-Performance Mechanism.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,721 discloses a system for transferring data between input/output devices and main or expanded storage under dynamic control of independent indirect address words.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,351 discloses a method and system for memory management of a client/server computing network.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,491,694 discloses an apparatus and method for establishing "virtual connections" through a packet switched data communications network, the network including a plurality of end systems and switches connected by links, to allocate a shared resource among competing devices.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,611 discloses a method and apparatus for dynamically loading an ABIOS device support layer in a computer system.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,506,902 discloses a data broadcasting system for the low-cost delivery of character-heavy data such as newspapers and magazines.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,513,126 discloses a method for a sender to automatically distribute information to a receiver on a network using devices and communication channels defined in the receiver profiles.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,513,314 discloses a fault tolerant NFS server system and mirroring protocol for the retrieval of data files including a client system connected to a data communication network.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,508 discloses a object-oriented client/server facility (CSF) and networking service facility (NSF) interfacing between application programs residing in client and server nodes of a distributed services network.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,510 discloses a communications internetwork system connecting a client node array to a resource array.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,517,645 discloses a method and system for managing the connection of client components to an interface implemented by a sever component.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,517,668 discloses a distributed computing system having a distributed protocol stack.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,041 discloses a data processor and a data transfer method for efficiently transferring data between a plurality of information processing devices as in a client server system.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,526,490 discloses a data transfer control unit using a control circuit to achieve high speed data transfer.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,757 discloses a communication network system in which a plurality of information processing equipments are connected with a communication line for communication of a message.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,533 discloses a system for remote mirroring of digital data from a primary network server to a remote network server, which includes a primary data transfer unit and a remote data transfer unit which are connected one with another by a conventional communication link.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,585 discloses a data storage management system for networked interconnected processors, including a local area network and a storage server.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,046 discloses a peer to peer connection authorizer which includes a system authorizer mechanism, a client connection manager, and a server connection manager.

None of these prior related art references discloses a system for imaging (or mirroring) binary data from one computer hard disk drive over a computer network to one or many other computer hard disk drives either through a client/server mode or a peer-to-peer mode, to provide a mechanism or process for rapid software distribution on networked computers which eliminates the necessity of using each application's install utility individually on each computer.

MICROFICHE APPENDIX

This specification includes a Microfiche Appendix which includes 2 pages with a total of 108 frames. The microfiche appendix includes computer source code of one preferred embodiment of the invention. In other embodiments of the invention the inventive concept may be implemented in other computer code, in computer hardware, in other circuitry, in a combination of these or otherwise. The Microfiche Appendix is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and is considered to be a part of the disclosure of this specification.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is desirable to provide a method and system for installing computer software and computer data files on more than one computer simultaneously, over a network, where the method can function upon user command either under a client/server model or a peer-to-peer model of operation.

Accordingly, it is the primary object of this invention to provide a process for installing computer application programs on multiple computer systems simultaneously over a computer network.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a process for mirroring data files on multiple computer systems simultaneously over a computer network.

It is further object of this invention to provide a method for copying binary computer data from one computer hard disk drive to one or more other computer hard disk drives, which does not require the use of a computer file server.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a system for mirroring computer data from one computer disk drive to another computer disk drive in a peer-to-peer computer communications model.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a system for mirroring computer data from one computer disk drive to another computer disk drive in a client/server computer communications model.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a method for mirroring computer data between one computer disk drive to another computer disk drive that permits the user to select between a client/server and peer-to-peer computer communications.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a method and system for mirroring computer data from disk drive to disk drive that improves the cost performance of client/server systems available in the art.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a computer data mirroring system that incorporates data compression.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a computer data imaging system that has the capability of imaging a single disk partition, multiple disk partitions, or the entire hard disk, from one computer hard disk to one or more other computer hard disks simultaneously.

Additional objects, features and advantages of this invention will become apparent to persons of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the remainder of the specification and upon referring to the attached figures.

These objects are achieved by a set of two computer programs, referred to by the inventor as IMGBLSTR and IMGSLAVE. The IMGBLSTR program is the primary control program while the IMGSLAVE program is used for listening for data from the IMGBLSTR program across the network and writing such data to the local disk drive.

The IMGBLSTR program operates in five modes of operation. These are:

1. IMGBLSTR reads the data from the disk drive of the master computer, compresses the data, and writes it (uploads it) to an "image file" resident on a network file server. This is the client/server model or mode of operation.

2. In connection with performing mode 1 above, IMGBLSTR broadcasts (simultaneously sends in parallel) the data that is being uploaded to the image file on the network to all computers running the IMGSLAVE program. This mode of operation is a combination of client/server and peer-to-peer.

3. IMGBLSTR reads the data from the local computer disk drive and broadcasts it on the wire (network) to computers running the IMGSLAVE program. The IMGBLSTR program does not upload the data to an image file on a network file server, rather the data goes directly to the slave computers running the IMGSLAVE program. This is the peer-to-peer mode of operation.

4. IMGBLSTR reads the data from an image file located on a network file server, decompresses it, and writes it to its own local computer hard disk drive. This the download process for the client/server model.

5. While performing operation mode 4 above, IMGBLSTR broadcasts the data that is being downloaded from the image file on the network to all computers running the IMGSLAVE program. This is a combination client/server and peer-to-peer mode.

The IMGBLSTR program determines which mode to use through either a series of menu options presented to the operator, or through commands from the operator entered on the command line when the program is launched.

The IMGSLAVE program operates in only one mode of operation. Specifically, it opens a communication socket on the network, listens for data received on that socket, and then processes the data received on the socket. Each packet of data received on the socket contains a command field which tells IMGSLAVE what the data contained in the packet is used for and how the data is to be processed. The commands in the command field are:

    ______________________________________
    Command   Performed by
                         Function
    ______________________________________
    Drive Geometry
              Master     Compare geometry of master image
                         with slave
    RSVP      Slave      Response to master to indicate
                         participation in download
    Conform   Master     Acknowledgment that slave has
    Download             joined the process and that master
                         knows slave is ready
    Sector Data
              Master     Write data to receive buffer
    Sector Data &
              Master     Write data to receive buffer and flush
    Flush                data to disk
    Skip Track
              Master     No data in current track - Skip this
                         track
    Resend Request
              Slave      Slave missed data - Please resend
    End of Data
              Master     Master is finished sending data -
                         Ready for a slave request
    Done      Master     Image complete - Exit program
    Disconnect
              Slave      Slave response to master "done"
                         command - Slave disconnecting
    Disconnect
              Master     Master acknowledges slave
    Acknowledge          disconnect
    ______________________________________

• Inventors
  Turpin, Kevin J.; Clark, Christopher P.;
• Assignee
  Altiris, Inc. (Lindon, UT)
• Published
  Nov-7-2000
• Current US Classes:
  709/208
  709/221
  717/178
• Application #
  854262
• International Classes
  G06F 013/38; G06F 015/17
• Field of Search
  395/200.5 395/200.51 395/200.52 395/200.83 395/200.38 395/200.41 395/200.67 395/712 395/653 709/220 709/221 709/222 709/253 709/208 709/211 709/237 713/100
• Examiner
  Rinehart; Mark H.
• Agent
  Sadler; Lloyd W.
• US Patent References:
  4866644
  4872006
  5008814
  5249290
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  5325527
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