Patent ID: 7043547

Claim:
A method of reporting the availability of application servers in a distributed computer system, said system including a plurality of application servers, a reporter server and an administration terminal, wherein the application server and the reporter server are all interconnected via a network, the method comprising the steps: each of the application servers providing a services to a set of clients; the application servers collecting, in log files, data about the application servers, said data including information identifying when each of the application servers was started and stopped and data relating to why the server stopped operating, including the step of each of the application servers periodically searching one of the log files for indication of a crash or shutdown or start of the server, and computing the time said crash or shutdown or start occurred; connecting the reporter server in series between the application servers and the administration terminal; each of the application servers pushing by electronic mail at least one of said log files including said information, to the reporter server by electronic mail; operating the reporter server as a mid-level systems manager by receiving said log files and processing said log files to reduce the amount of information sent to the administration terminal, including the steps of, for each of the application servers, sorting said received electronic mails by order received, calculating the duration of downtime for each said crash or said shutdown, and displaying for each of the application servers said duration of downtime in said order; the reporter server comprising a random access memory, a system read only memory (ROM) including input/output system software, a central processing unit, a mass storage devices comprising at least one magnetic disk and including operating system software and application software, at least one removable storage means including a removable disk drive, a network adapter, a keyboard, a keyboard adapter, a pointing device, a pointing device adapter, a liquid crystal display panel, a display adapter, and a bus architecture; and each of the application servers comprising software for generating system logs and sending out electronic mail, random access memory, read only memory, a central processing unit, a mass storage device comprising at least one magnetic disk, at least one removable storage means including a removable disk drive, a network adapter, a keyboard, a keyboard adapter, a pointing device, a pointing device adapter, a liquid crystal display panel, a display adapter, and a bus architecture.