EP-4740101-A1 - METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SWITCHING FROM ACTIVE PROCESS TO STANDBY PROCESS

EP4740101A1EP 4740101 A1EP4740101 A1EP 4740101A1EP-4740101-A1

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to a system (125) and a method (400) for switching from an active process to a standby process in a communication network (105) The system (125) includes a generating module (220) to generate the standby process by creating backup of data of the active process for each user of a plurality of users and for each service of a plurality of services at a backend database (240). The system (125) further includes a rebuilding module (225) to rebuild data for each of the active process failure services as per sequence. The system (125) further includes a monitoring module (230) to check a status of rebuilt data for each active process failure service. Thereby, the system (125) switches from the active process to the standby process in the communication network (105) in an optimized manner to service a new request and reduce fail over duration.

Inventors

BHATNAGAR, AAYUSH
BISHT, BIRENDRA
Singh, Harbinder Pal
Soren, Rohit
SINGH, PRIYANKA
Aggarwal, Pravesh
Sahu, Bidhu
MALAV, Virendra
DAS, Raghav

Assignees

Jio Platforms Limited

Dates

Publication Date: 20260513
Application Date: 20240626

Claims (15)

1. A method (400) for switching from an active process to a standby process for at least one service in a network (105), the method (400) comprises the steps of: generating (405), by one or more processors (205), the standby process by creating backup of data of the active process for each user of a plurality of users and for each service of a plurality of services at a backend database (240); maintaining (410), by the one or more processors (205), a copy of a timer in the standby process for each service of the plurality of services in the active process; upon failure of active process of one or more services of the plurality of services, in order to switch to the standby process, arranging (415), by the one or more processors (205), a plurality of active process failure services in a sequence; rebuilding (420) data, by the one or more processors (205), for each of the active process failure service as per the sequence; and checking (425), by the one or more processors (205), a status of rebuilt data for each active process failure service.
2. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the backup of data created for each user and each service includes a correlation identifier between each user and the associated one or more services at the backend database.
3. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the plurality of active process failure services includes services whose respective active processes have failed.
4. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the one or more processors (205) arranges the plurality of active process failure services in the sequence by: assigning, a priority value for each of the plurality of active process failure services based on a respective time status; arranging each of the plurality of active process failure services in the sequence based on the assigned priority value, wherein from the plurality of active process failure services, the one or more active process failure services whose priority value is higher is arranged prior compared to the remaining plurality of active process failure services in the sequence.
5. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1, wherein a specific active process failure service is assigned a higher priority value compared to the remaining plurality of active process failure services, when the timer status is one of: a timer of the specific active process failure service expires prior compared to the respective timers of the remaining plurality of active process failure services arranged in the sequence; and the timer of the specific active process failure service has already expired.
6. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the step of rebuilding data, for each active process failure service in the sequence, includes the steps of: rebuilding data for the active process failure service arranged foremost in the sequence; and delaying, rebuilding of data for the remaining active process failure services in the sequence until the active process failure service arranged foremost is built and thereafter rebuilding data for the remaining active process failure services as per the sequence, in order to reduce the load on the standby process, to service a new request and to reduce fail over duration.
7. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1, wherein each active process failure service is rebuilt using the respective backup of data stored at the backend database (240).
8. The method (400) as claimed in claim 1 , wherein each service of the plurality of services includes at least one of, messaging, media, etc.
9. A system (125) for switching from an active process to a standby process for at least one service in a network (105), the system (125) comprising: a generating module (220) configured to: generate, the standby process by creating backup of data of the active process for each user of a plurality of users and for each service of a plurality of services at a backend database (240); maintain, a copy of a timer in the standby process for each service of the plurality of services in the active process; and upon failure of active process of one or more services of the plurality of services, in order to switch to the standby process, arrange, a plurality of active process failure services in a sequence; a rebuilding module (225) configured to, rebuild data, for each of the active process failure service as per the sequence; and a monitoring module (230) configured to check, a status of rebuilt data for each active process failure service.
10. The system (125) as claimed in claim 9, wherein the backup of data created for each user and each service includes a correlation identifier between each user and the associated one or more services at the backend database (240).
11. The system (125) as claimed in claim 9, wherein the generating module (220) arranges the plurality of active process failure services in the sequence by: assigning, a priority value for each of the plurality of active process failure services based on a respective time status; and arranging each of the plurality of active process failure services in the sequence based on the assigned priority value, wherein from the plurality of active process failure services, the one or more active process failure services whose priority value is higher is arranged prior compared to the remaining plurality of active process failure services in the sequence.
12. The system (125) as claimed in claim 11, wherein a specific active process failure service is assigned a higher priority value compared to the remaining plurality of active process failure services, when the timer status is one of: a timer of the specific active process failure service expires prior compared to the respective timers of the remaining plurality of active process failure services arranged in the sequence; and the timer of the specific active process failure service has already expired.
13. The system (125) as claimed in claim 9, wherein the rebuilding module (225) of the system (125) is further configured to: rebuild data for the active process failure service arranged foremost in the sequence; and delay, rebuilding of data for the remaining active process failure services until the active process failure service arranged foremost is built and thereafter rebuilding data for the remaining active process failure services as per the sequence, in order to reduce a load on the standby process, to service a new request and to reduce fail over duration.
14. A User Equipment (UE) (110), comprising: one or more primary processors (305) coupled with a memory (310), communicatively coupled to one or more processors (205), wherein said memory (310) stores instructions which when executed by the one or more primary processors (305) causes the UE (110) to: transmit, a request from a user via an interface module to a network (105), in order to avail the one or more services; and wherein the one or more processors (205) are further configured to perform the method as claimed in claim 1.
15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer- readable instructions that, when executed by a processor (605), causes the processor (605) to: generate, the standby process by creating backup of data of the active process for each user of a plurality of users and for each service of a plurality of services at a backend database (240); maintain, a copy of a timer in the standby process for each service of the plurality of services in the active process; upon failure of active process of one or more services of the plurality of services, in order to switch to the standby process, arrange, a plurality of active process failure services in a sequence; rebuild data, for each of the active process failure service as per the sequence; and check, a status of rebuilt data for each active process failure service.

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SWITCHING FROM ACTIVE PROCESS TO STANDBY PROCESS FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention generally relates to communication networks, and more particularly relates to transition from a standby process to an active process in a communication network. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] In existing applications, there may be a number of reasons because of which an active process handling of a user in a communication network may fail such as a segment fault and the like. [0003] When a protocol data unit (PDU) session is established, the application stores PDU states and other relevant information in PDU contexts maintained in a local cache. These contexts are used by the process to handle User Equipment (UE) related call flows. In the event of a failover, where active process restarts due to some issue or planned event, corresponding standby process takes over, it becomes crucial for the newly active process to be able to enable UE related call flows in the same manner as in the previous active process. There are two options for achieving this. [0004] The first option is to restore all the PDU session contexts immediately after failover. However, this approach poses challenges as it could potentially overwhelm the system, leading to system hangs. Restoring all session contexts would take significant time and require occupying all the available CPUs, which would impact processing of the currently live traffic. [0005] The second option is to restore the PDU session context only when it is required, for instance, on receiving of any network trigger. However, this approach introduces delays to start the user state machine and, in some cases, where no network trigger is received, the user state machine would not start, which could result in missing the network handling based on the user state at the network node e.g. handling of charging triggers or data quota allocations for the affected PDU sessions. [0006] At the moment when the active process fails, a lot of to-be -processed activities may be pending. Also, there are various timers running which are associated with the processes. Examples of processes are charging, registration, etc. [0007] If there is a time gap between the take-over by the standby process after the active process failure happens, a lot of essential activities which need to be performed regularly and periodically for each and every subscriber may not happen such as sending trigger to Charging Function (CHF) node and the like. These activities are controlled by inbuilt timers for each activity. These activities may be pending when the standby process is turned to active process. [0008] When the active process fails, the standby process takes over to maintain continuity of services for a user. In order to function as a replacement of the active process, the standby process needs to have all the data which was built during and within the active process. There are services and aspects associated with the active process and the standby process needs to ideally be able to map the aspects in the active process to function and provide for the failure of the active process and act as a standby process. [0009] For example, for each user there may be a number of services and associated data which the user may have subscribed to such as messaging, media, etc. All this data related to the services needs to be transferred to the standby process for the standby process to function as a replacement for the active process. [0010] Also, a stateful needs to be maintained and transferred between the active process and the standby process. [0011] When the active process fails and the standby process takes over, the standby process may instantly try to rebuild the data. This puts a lot of loads on the system and the system takes time for taking and servicing any new requests. As a result, there will be a delay in servicing new requests. Further, in case of a segment failure and the data needs to be rebuilt for a large group of users simultaneously, the system may get so overloaded that it may not be able to service any new requests and in such a case, the delay and the failure over duration is even greater. There may also be loss of data in case the system hangs. [0012] Besides failure, when the standby process needs to take over, rebuilding of the data is also required when a request comes for a certain user or a certain number of specific users. [0013] It is desired that there is minimum delay, and a continuity is maintained for services for users in the network when the standby process takes over from the active process in case of failures. [0014] Therefore, there is a need for an advancement for a system and method that can overcome at least one of the above shortcomings, particularly to switch over from the active process to the standby process. BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0015] One or more embodiments of the present disclosure provide a system and method for switching