Patent ID: 7457236

Claim:
A method for providing fault-tolerant application cluster service (APCS), suitable for use in a group in a cluster environment, wherein there are a plurality of nodes and a database independent of said nodes in said cluster environment, and said nodes belong to said group and a master node and a plurality of slave nodes are classified from said nodes, said method comprising: performing a node-clustering step for storing node information for each of said nodes into said database, wherein said node information includes a node ID and APCS service data; performing a slave-node detection step, wherein said slave-node detection step comprising: a first node of said nodes retrieving data in said database to determine if there exists said master node in said cluster environment when said first node is activated, thereby generating a first result; assigning the node first activated among said nodes as said master node when said first result is no; said first node notifying said master node that said first node is added to said cluster environment as one of said slave nodes; said master node activating a heartbeat mechanism for sending a master heartbeat periodically to each of said slave nodes, and waiting for an acknowledgement response from each of said slave nodes; and each of said slave nodes starting a timer for waiting for said master node to send said master heartbeat, wherein each of said slave nodes resets said timer after receiving said master heartbeat; and performing a master-node detection step, wherein, when the sending of said master heartbeat is interrupted due to said master node's errors, said timer will be stopped (“Timeout”) after each of said slave nodes has not received said master heartbeat for a period of time, and thus each of said slave nodes stops waiting for receiving said master heartbeat, and starts detecting if said master node is still in normal operation.