Patent ID: 8578218

Claim:
A method for monitoring the health of a processing entity in a computing system, comprising: using at least one processor to perform a process, the process comprising: initializing the processing entity; locking a resource that is to be operated upon by the processing entity, wherein the processing entity is associated with a time point, and on periodic basis, the processing entity both refreshes the time point and monitors health status of oilier processing entities by checking time points associated with the other processing entities; determining whether the processing entity is unhealthy by identifying an overdue time point associated with the processing entity, wherein the overdue time point exceeds a designated time period for being updated by the processing entity, and determination of whether the processing entity is unhealthy is performed by the other processing entities rather than by a central processing entity tasked with centrally monitoring the health status of the processing entity; and performing one or more actions to release one or more locks on the resource held by the processing entity.