Patent ID: 7962453

Claim:
A method of redistributing responsibilities for resources in a multiple-node system, the method comprising the steps of: each node of a plurality of nodes determining a window-resource mapping between resources mastered by said each node and a plurality of windows, each window of the plurality of windows corresponding to a separate set of resources for which responsibility is to be redistributed; a first node using a first resource index to locate resource information related to the resources mastered by the first node; wherein the first node is a particular node of the plurality of nodes; a second node of the plurality of nodes using a second resource index to locate resource information related to resources mastered by the second node; reassigning from the first node to the second node responsibility for only a first set of resources, wherein the first set of resources correspond to a first window of said plurality of windows and are the responsibility of said first node; for each window of said plurality of windows that is not the first window, reassigning to a node of the multi-node system responsibility for only a set of resources corresponding to said each window, wherein the corresponding set of resources are the responsibility of said first node; wherein the window-resource mapping is based on: (a) a different type of index access structure than that used for the first resource index, or (b) a window hash function, wherein: the window hash function maps a resource to one of a number of windows of said plurality of windows; the first resource index is a first hash index that uses a first hash function, and the first hash function maps a resource to a first number of buckets, wherein the number of windows is not a multiple or a factor of the first number of buckets.