High availability/high density system and method
A system and method for providing high availability for telecommunications and data communications by implementing a network bus architecture at a card level. The network bus architecture, which may be a combination of hardware, software, and APIs, replaces the conventional midplane/backplane as the system bus for PCI purposes. The system provides physical redundancy to the system by connecting ports of the various system cards using dual/redundant ethernet switches. Further, since the system cards are connected through network connections, failure of any component is interpreted and addressed as a network failure instead of as a hardware failure.
1 . A high availability telecom/datacom architecture comprising:
dual/redundant ethernet switches;
a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant ethernet switches; and
at least two CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.
2 . The architecture of claim 1 further comprising:
a system monitor and control module coupled to the at least two CPUs and the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.
3 . A high availability telecom/datacom architecture comprising:
dual/redundant network links;
a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant network links; and
a system controller coupled to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.
4 . The architecture of claim 3 wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.
5 . The architecture of claim 3 wherein the dual/redundant network links are implemented using ethernet switches.
6 . The architecture of claim 4 wherein the dual/redundant network links are implemented using ethernet switches.
7 . The architecture of claim 3 further comprising:
a system monitor and control module coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.
8 . The architecture of claim 5 further comprising:
a system monitor and control module coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.
9 . A network bus architecture for providing high availability to telecom/datacom systems comprising:
dual/redundant network links;
a plurality of I/O cards connected to the dual/redundant network links; and,
a system controller coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the dual/redundant network links.
10 . The network bus architecture of claim 9 wherein the network links are implemented using ethernet switches.
11 . The architecture of claim 10 wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the ethernet switches.
12 . The architecture of claim 9 wherein the system controller comprises multiple CPUs coupled to each other and to the plurality of I/O cards via the network links.
13 . The architecture of claim 9 further comprising:
a system monitor and control node coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards.
14 . The architecture of claim 12 further comprising:
a system monitor and control node coupled to the system controller and the plurality of I/O cards.
15 . The architecture of claim 9 further comprising software and APIs.