Patent ID: 8392668

Claim:
A method for managing state information in a distributed computing system composed of component computing systems, the method comprising: for each component computing system, assigning each unit of state information to one of three partitions including a local state information partition, a distributed, shared, locally cached, but globally consistent state information partition, and a distributed, shared state information partition; and during operation of the distributed computing system, when units of state information are assigned to the local state information partition, independently managing, on each component computing system, local state information, when units of state information are assigned to the distributed, shared, locally cached, but globally consistent state information partition, managing each unit of distributed, shared, locally cached, but globally consistent state information among two or more component computing systems using a distributed-but-locally-cached-storage-register protocol, and when units of state information are assigned to the distributed, shared, state information partition, managing each unit of distributed, shared state information using a distributed-storage-register protocol, wherein the distributed-storage-register protocol provides quorum-based READ and WRITE operations directed to a distributed storage register comprising distributed-storage-register values locally stored on each component computing system, and wherein the distributed-but-locally-cached-storage-register protocol provides operations directed to a distributed, but locally cached, storage register including, in addition to the operations provided by the distributed-storage-register protocol, a local READ operation and a STATE WRITE operation.