Patent ID: 7222268

Claim:
A data processing system comprising: a. a plurality of data processing system components, the components each responsible for carrying out a subset of data processing system functions; b. a plurality of function domains, the domains having associated with them subset of the data processing system functions, with a plurality of peer domain level components thus carrying out the data processing functions for a given domain, and the plurality of domains forming a domain hierarchy, at least one component of at least one domain at a given level in the hierarchy providing a failure notification, which is of a hang state detected by a components peer element; and c. a system availability manager comprising: i. a plurality of Available Manager (AM) elements, each AM element associated with a corresponding one of the data processing system components, the AM elements thus also arranged in an AM hierarchy that parallels the domain hierarchy, at least one AM element connected to receive failure notification from one or more AM elements associated with the data processing system components associated with a next lower domain level, peer AM elements participate in a heartbeat protocol to detect a component hang state such that during their normal state execution, wherein peer AM elements located at the same level in the AM hierarchy provide a heartbeat signal notification in a determined sequence to at least one of its peer AM elements.