Patent ID: 8069447

Claim:
An article of manufacture including a non-transitory information storage medium wherein is stored information, comprising: a first set of digital information at a client device, including a virtual machine with a replica-aware remote method invocation (RA RMI) stub; wherein the RA RMI stub includes a load balancing software component and a failover software component for selecting a service provider from a plurality of service providers in a cluster; the RA RMI stub contacts a naming service within the cluster that provides to the RA RMI stub an updated list of currently available service providers in the cluster; the RA RMI stub uses its load balancing software component to select a service provider that provides a service requested by the client device; the RA RMI stub invokes the requested service provided by the selected service provider using remote method invocation, wherein each of the service providers provides a remote method implementation that the RA RMI stub can communicate with using remote method invocation; and if the selected service provider fails to respond to the remote method invocation, the RA RMI stub uses its failover software component to remove the failed service provider from the list of currently available service providers and then select a new service provider.