Patent ID: 7802128

Claim:
A method for failing over applications in a multi-node system, comprising: detecting a failure of an application that is currently executing on a first node of the multi-node system; in response to detecting the failure of the application on the first node, performing: updating a node exclusion list by adding the first node to the node exclusion list; selecting a second node that is not currently on the node exclusion list; and attempting to restart the same application on the second node; detecting a second failure of the same application on the second node; in response to detecting the second failure of the same application on the second node, performing: updating the node exclusion list by adding the second node to the node exclusion list; selecting a third node that is not currently on the node exclusion list; and attempting to restart the same application on the third node; and based on one or more factors, ceasing to attempt to restart the application on any node of the multi-node system, wherein the one or more factors include the number of nodes on which the plurality of successive failovers has failed to start the application; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.