PROBLEM:
A South African telecommunication service provider needed to use an active/active system to support its prepaid calling card service. Customers purchased cell phone cards with the desired amount of minutes and used them to pay for their calling time. Customers recharged the cards when the available minutes ran down. Customers also transferred time between cards, resulting in combined time from multiple cards.
SHADOWBASE SOLUTION - Homogeneous Active/Active Systems:
- The heart of the system runs on an active/active pair of HP NonStop Server nodes called the Prepaid Front Ends (PPFE’s). Bi-directional replication is consigned for active/active load-balancing of the PPFE transactions across these nodes.
- Data collisions are avoided by appropriately partitioning the database, which satisfies the PPFE application’s business continuity requirements.
- The service provider also uses data replication to integrate the PPFE system with a variety of other applications running on diverse systems: billing and administration, card recharging, airtime transfer, stock reporting, and a web front end for online customer access to certain card-associate resources.
(Please click diagram to enlarge)
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The above was adapted from the book: Breaking the Availability Barrier, Volume III: Active/Active Systems in Practice by Paul J. Holenstein, Dr. Bruce Holenstein, and Dr. Bill Highleyman. Click here for more information on the book.