Patent ID: 7359959

Claim:
A method for obtaining a quorum vote comprising: determining that a network connection between a first node and a second node is inactive, wherein the network connection is associated with a local area network; determining, by the first node, whether a Universal Serial Bus (USB) quorum cable is reserved by the second node by querying a memory embedded in the USB quorum cable, wherein the USB quorum cable comprises a first end connected to the first node and a second end connected to the second node; and if the USB quorum cable is not reserved by the second node, the first node: attempting to reserve the USB quorum cable; determining whether the attempt to reserve the USB quorum cable was successful; and obtaining the quorum vote if the attempt to reserve the USB quorum cable is successful, wherein the quorum vote is obtained without direct communication between the first node and the second node, attempting to create a cluster using the quorum vote, wherein the cluster comprises the first node.