Communication apparatuses with service processing ability are provided with disaster recovery ability respectively, so as to ensure that a communication system can provide communication service safely and reliably. The operating principle of the disaster recovery is as follows: providing a corresponding backup machine for a production machine and maintaining the synchronization of service data and configuration mechanism between the backup machine and the production machine; if the production machine gets a failure in the communication process, the backup machine takes over the production machine to continue to provide communication service processing ability, so as to guarantee to provide the communication service continuously.
But at present, if the production machine gets a failure in the communication process, a manual take-over manner is generally used to complete the process of the backup machine talking over the production machine to continue to provide the communication service processing ability. That is, a failure monitoring apparatus is configured in advance to monitor operating states of the production machine and the related peripheral apparatuses, and if the network administrator finds that the failure monitoring apparatus sends out alarm information, then when they determine that the production machine gets a failure by analyzing the alarm information, related processing measures may be taken to complete the process of the backup machine taking over the production machine to continue to provide the communication service processing ability. The following will briefly illustrate the main process of completing the process of the backup machine taking over the production machine to continue to provide the communication service processing ability in a manual take-over manner.
FIG. 1 is a topological diagram of a simple communication system configured with disaster recovery ability, in which the process from a production machine getting a failure to a backup machine talking over to continue to provide the communication service processing ability may be mainly divided into three stages: failure discovering stage, service switching stage and backup machine take-over stage. The main process to complete the three stages in a manual take-over manner is as follows:
1. Failure Discovering Stage
The network administrator determines whether the production machine gets failure or not by analyzing alarm information sent out by the failure monitoring apparatus, which is used for monitoring whether the production machine, a service access apparatus and other related communication apparatus get failure. If the failure of the production machine is affirmed after the analyzing, then the following service switching stage is performed.
Certainly, the network administrator can also determine the failure occurring in the production machine based on the complaint of the subscriber received by the customer service center.
2. Service Switching Stage
After the network administrator determines that the production machine gets a failure, they switch service control messages sent from the service access apparatus or other related intermediate communication apparatus to the production machine, to the backup machine to be processed. In the disaster recovery technology, service control messages generally refer to control message or signaling transmitted before the establishment of a communication. There are different service switching manners to complete switching the service control message originally sent to the production machine to the backup machine to be processed. For example, when the production machine and the backup machine are both Service Control Point (SCP) apparatuses, the service switching manners may be two types as follows:
Apparatus for performingServiceServiceservice switchingaccess mannerswitching mannerService SwitchingCAMEL/INAP-the networkPoint (SSP) or otherTCAP-MTP-SS7/administratorcommunication apparatusSS1 signalingmodifies theaccessing in aaccessdestinationsignaling mannersignaling addressin the SSP orintermediatecommunicationapparatusService ManagementTCP-IPthe networkPoint (SMP) or otheraccessadministratorcommunication apparatusmodifies theaccessing in datadestination IPmanneraddress in theSMP or intermediatecommunicationapparatus
3. Backup Machine Take-Over Stage
A backup machine is started manually by the network administrator. Based on the self-stored service data and configuration mechanism synchronized with the production machine, the backup machine takes over the service processing ability of the production machine, so as to continue to provide communication service processing ability for the whole communication process to ensure to provide the communication service continuously.
When a backup machine provides the disaster recovery ability for several production machines at the same time, the network administrator may also need to select the corresponding service data and configuration mechanism in the service data and the configuration mechanism stored in the backup machine, so as to take over the corresponding production machine getting a failure to continue to provide service processing ability.
In fact, one of the main objects for configuring the disaster recovery ability in the communication system is to ensure reliability and safety of the communication service as much as possible, so as to reduce the interruption time of the communication service as much as possible. However, for the above mentioned process of implementing service switching in a manual take-over manner, the time required for the service switching process depends completely on the time required for the manual intervention because there are several manual interventions in the process. Therefore, due to excessive manual interventions, the communication service will be not taken over for a long time, and thereby the communication system can not be configured with the disaster recovery ability.