Patent ID: 8316110

Claim:
A method comprising: changing a first name of a server computer system to a second name, wherein the server computer system has no clustering services installed when the changing is performed, the server computer system includes an operating system and a separate server application installed on the server computer system, and the server application is configured as a non-clustered standalone installation; installing cluster software on the server computer system, wherein the server application is already installed on the server computer system when the cluster software is installed, the installing the cluster software does not require reinstallation of the server application, the cluster software provides communications services, the cluster software allows the server computer system to operate as a node of a computer system cluster, and the cluster software communicates information indicating a state of at least one node in the computer system cluster using an intra-cluster communication protocol; installing a plurality of agents on the server computer system, wherein the plurality of agents act as intermediaries between resources and core clustering services, wherein the resources comprise hardware resources and software resources, a first agent of the plurality of agents is a general service agent that controls the hardware resources, wherein the hardware resources are monitored by the cluster software, and a second agent of the plurality of agents is an application specific agent associated with the server application, wherein the second agent provides the server application with any-to-any failover configuration information, and the any-to-any failover configuration information comprises failover priority information, creating a virtual server, wherein the virtual server comprises the server computer system; assigning the first name as a virtual server name of the virtual server; and establishing a connection to the virtual server in response to receiving a request to establish a connection to the server application.