Patent ID: 8433760
Filing Date: 2013-04-30
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A computer system comprising a processing cluster including a plurality of physical or virtual processing nodes, the computer system comprising at least one processor for executing program instructions and at least one memory coupled to the processor for executing the program instructions, wherein the program instructions are program instructions for determining node operating status among a cluster of the physical or virtual processing nodes, the program instructions comprising program instructions for: first transmitting gossip messages directly between node pairs in the cluster of nodes, wherein the gossip messages contain an indication of operational status of other nodes in the cluster of nodes, wherein the other nodes are nodes other than the nodes in the node pairs; receiving the gossip messages at the node pairs; responsive to the receiving, at the individual nodes, locally updating a local operating status of the other nodes according to the received gossip messages, wherein the local status kept by the individual nodes indicates the status of a particular one of the other nodes as a non-operating status if the receiving by the individual nodes has not received a gossip message from the particular one of the other nodes during a predetermined time period; responsive to setting the local status of the particular one of the other nodes as kept by the individual nodes to a non-operating status, second transmitting a node down message indicating the non-operating status of the particular node to the other nodes in the cluster, and repeating the first transmitting, receiving, updating and second transmitting at each of the nodes in the node pairs, so that the local status kept by each of the nodes reflects the status of each of the other nodes in the cluster.