Patent ID: 8650281

Claim:
A non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium storing program instructions executable by one or more processors to: receive from a first node a request for control of a particular arbitration server of a set of arbitration servers for arbitrating network partition events, wherein the set of arbitration servers is ordered according to an order; determine whether the first node won control of a previous arbitration server of the set of arbitration servers, wherein the previous arbitration server comes before the particular arbitration server in the order; if the first node did not win control of the previous arbitration server: wait for a request for control of the particular arbitration server from a second node that won control of the previous arbitration server; determine whether the request from the second node is received before a wait time expires; if the request from the second node is received before the wait time expires, send a response to the second node indicating that it has won the particular arbitration server and a response to the first node indicating that it has lost the particular arbitration server; and if the request from the second node is not received before the wait time expires, send a response to the first node indicating that it has won the particular arbitration server.