Patent ID: 8874960

Claim:
A geographically distributed, fault-tolerant computing arrangement having automated preferred master election capability, the system comprising: a first cell at a first location having at least one first cell worker of a particular worker type, the first cell being designated a current preferred cell and the first cell worker being designated a master worker, where a master worker is one that is permitted to interact with data on a first production database at a first geographic location; a preference server; and a second cell at a second location having at least one second cell worker; where, responsive to receiving a notification of a production database failover event where the first production database is replaced by a second production database at a second geographic location, the preference server calculates new preference parameters based on the database failover event notification, the second geographic location, the first cell location, and the second cell location, the second cell location being closer to the second geographic location the first cell location; the preference generates data identifying the second cell as a newly preferred cell based on the calculated new preference parameters and provides said generated data to workers in the first and second cells; the first cell worker loses its designation as the master worker and the first cell loses its designation as the current preferred cell based on said provided data; the second cell worker becomes designated as the master worker and the second cell becomes designated as the current preferred cell based on said provided data; and where said generated data is written to a preference file that is read by said workers.