Patent ID: 7937442

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for detecting failure of a shared conference resource in a conference system, the method comprising: receiving at a conference server pool from a shared conference resource a keep-alive message sent by the shared conference resource, the shared conference resource servicing a plurality of associated conferences; upon receiving the keep-alive message, updating information regarding keep-alive messages sent by the shared conference resource on a conference store; upon determining that a keep-alive message has not been received from the shared conference resource for at least a keep-alive interval: identifying the plurality of conferences that are associated with the shared conference resource; indicating that each identified conference is suspected as being unhealthy; sending a get conference request from a conference server in the conference server pool to the shared conference resource to determine a health status of the conferences serviced by the shared conference resource; upon receiving a response to the get conference request, for each of the identified conferences that are listed in the response as being healthy, indicating that the identified conference is healthy for each of the identified conferences that are not listed in the response as being healthy, indicating the identified conference is unhealthy, if the conference server does not receive a response to the get conference request, indicating that that each identified conference is unhealthy; when at least one identified conference is indicated as unhealthy, requesting by the conference server a replacement shared conference resource to service the unhealthy conference; and rolling over each unhealthy conference associated with the shared conference resource to the replacement shared conference resource; wherein at least one of the identified conferences is rolled over to be serviced by the replacement shared conference resource and at least one of the identified conferences continues to be serviced by the shared conference resource.