Patent ID: 8082470

Claim:
A method, comprising: electing a first server to serve access requests for a first resource, the first resource being under control of the first server to serve access requests of a plurality of servers; automatically detecting a failure of the first server in serving an access request for the first resource; and in response to a detection of the failure of the first server, electing a second server to serve access requests for a second resource, the second resource being equivalent to the first resource, the second resource being under control of the second server, wherein the first resource and the second resource are firmware memory, both the first resource and the second resource store a same set of instructions for the plurality of servers, wherein the plurality of servers comprises the second server, wherein a third server has no firmware memory, wherein the third server accesses the first resource of the first server for the set of instructions when the first server is elected and the third server accesses the second resource of the second server for the set of instructions when the second server is elected.