Distributed hosting of web content using partial replication

(54) DISTRIBUTED HOSTING OF WEB

CONTENT USING PARTIAL REPLICATION

(75) Inventors: Jin Li, Sammamish, WA (US); Cha Zhang, Pittsburgh, PA (US)

Correspondence Address:

LEE & HAYES PLLC

421 W RIVERSIDE AVENUE SUITE 500

SPOKANE, WA 99201

(73) Assignee: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US)

(21) Appl. No.: 10/845,625

(22) Filed: May 14, 2004

Publication Classification (51) Int. CI.7 G06F 15/173; G06F 15/16

(52) U.S. CI 709/240; 709/203; 709/219

(57) ABSTRACT

The mechanisms described herein are directed at hosting content of a web site on multiple computing devices. A relative importance for each file associated with the web site is calculated. This relative importance is used to calculate several subsets of the content which are distributed to several devices within a computer cluster, such as a server array, peer-to-peer network, and the like. The subsets may include coded messages created using an erasure coding scheme on packets containing portions of one or more files. Upon retrieving a file, a fixed number of distinct coded messages are retrieved from the devices based on the erasure coding scheme. The file is re-created with these distinct messages. Because multiple devices hold the content, the web site may be retrieved significantly faster and the reliability is increased without consuming a large amount of storage space or bandwidth of any one computing device.