Patent ID: 8381017

Claim:
A method for managing quorum services in a cluster infrastructure for reliable failover of shared resources, comprising: automatically triggering, using a processor, at least one automated fencing operation by a quorum service within a cluster infrastructure layer of a cluster environment comprising a plurality of nodes to reliably maintain a node usability state of each node of the plurality of nodes indicating an availability of each node to control and access at least one shared resource of the cluster, by: responsive to the quorum service controlling a node initialization of a new node within the cluster environment, automatically setting, by the quorum service, a locally maintained node usability state of each node of the plurality of nodes to a state of usable, wherein the state of usable indicates a node is unrestricted in access to the at least one shared resource; responsive to the quorum service controlling a node join to join the new node to a domain of the cluster environment, automatically detecting, by the quorum service, whether the new node has a previously set usability state of unusable; responsive to the quorum service detecting the new node has a previous set usability state of unusable, blocking the new node from joining the domain until the new node is reset; responsive to the quorum service detecting the new node does not have a previous set usability state of unusable, detecting, by the quorum service whether any of the plurality of nodes has a global node usability state set to pending or unusable; and responsive to detecting, by the quorum service that a selection of at least one of the plurality of nodes has a global usability state set to pending or unusable, setting, by the quorum service, the usability state of the selection of at least one of the plurality of nodes in the locally maintained node usability state to pending or unusuable, wherein the state of pending or unusable indicates a node is restricted in access to the at least one shared resource; and reporting, by the quorum service, the node usability state of each node as a cluster health status to at least one distributed application within an application layer of the cluster environment, to provide a reliable cluster health status of the plurality of nodes to the at least one distributed application for a failover of said at least one shared resource from control by a failed node from among the plurality of nodes to another node from among the plurality of nodes.