Patent ID: 8645525

Claim:
A method, comprising: assigning, to a first computer in a cluster of computers via a cluster management program executed by the first computer, a first unique prime number relative to unique prime numbers assigned to other computers in the cluster of computers, where the computers in the cluster of computers manage their own active partition determination in response to partitioning of the cluster using the assigned unique prime numbers; and via the cluster management program executed by the first computer: detecting a partitioning event of the cluster into a plurality of partitions, each partition comprising at least one computer of the cluster; calculating a partition value, for each partition, from a product of the unique prime numbers assigned to each computer in each partition; determining, based upon the calculated partition value for each partition, an active partition, the active partition having a greatest partition value; and enabling the first computer to provide cluster services if the first computer is within the active partition; and where the first computer makes its own determination as to whether it is part of the active partition, and calculating partition values from the product of the unique prime numbers ensures that each partition value is unique and that only one partition is enabled as the active partition.