Patent ID: 8726065

Claim:
An apparatus for managing failover operations on a cluster of computers, the apparatus comprising: a computer processor; and a computer memory operatively coupled to the computer processor, the computer memory having disposed within it computer program instructions that, when executed by the computer processor, cause the computer processor to function by: identifying, by a failover hold module, a failure to access data storage in the cluster of computers; in response to identifying the failure to access data storage: holding all read operations directed to the data storage; and executing all write operations directed to the data storage by redirecting the write operations to a cache; identifying that a failover to an alternative data storage is complete; in response to identifying that the failover to the alternative data storage is complete: copying, from cache to the alternative data storage, the data written to the cache as part of execution of the write operations; and executing held read operations by reading data from the alternative data storage instead of the data storage to which the read operation is directed.