Patent ID: 7617292

Claim:
A method of operating a cluster filesystem for a cluster connected by a storage area network, comprising: maintaining cluster configuration data at each client node in a cluster; repeatedly multicasting from the cluster database a cluster database server address and a database generation identifier; requesting cluster information from the cluster database server by an existing client node in the cluster in response to the multicast cluster database server address or the database generation identifier being different than the cluster configuration data maintained at the existing client node; establishing a communication link by a candidate node not a member of the cluster with the cluster database server in response to the multicast cluster database server address and the database generation identifier; obtaining information from the cluster database server to join the cluster by the candidate node, the information including an address for at least one switch in the storage area network, obtaining, by the candidate node from the at least one switch, at least one port address of at least one port connected to at least one host bus adapter of the candidate node; sending addresses of the at least one port and at least one host bus adapter from the candidate node to the cluster database server to update the cluster information concerning the cluster maintained by the cluster database server; and requesting membership in the cluster by the candidate node.