Patent ID: 8369212

Claim:
A computer system comprising: at least one processing resource configured to control and communicate with at least one network device; a plurality of network resources configured to be coupled by a plurality of pathways between the at least one processing resource and the at least one network device; and at least one teaming module executable on the at least one processing resource and configured to manage failover in the computer system, wherein the at least one teaming module is configured to: present a user interface enabling selection from among plural different traffic types to use as a heartbeat, where absence of the heartbeat is an indication of failure, the plural different traffic types including multiple ones selected from among a traffic type defined by a specific protocol, a traffic type defined by a specific Internet Protocol (IP) address, and a traffic type defined by a specific Media Access Control (MAC) address; receive an indication of a selected user-specified traffic type from among the plural different traffic types to use as the heartbeat; communicate traffic via the plurality of network resources; and make a decision to fail over from a primary one of the pathways to a secondary one of the pathways based on failure to receive the heartbeat according to the user-specified traffic type, in combination with detection of availability of traffic according to the user-specified traffic type via the secondary pathway.