Patent ID: 7752486

Claim:
A recovery method, said method comprising: controlling, with a set of servers, access to a plurality of resources, wherein each server within the set of servers is configured to know a name and address of its peer servers, wherein said peer servers are those servers capable of handling resource access functions of a primary server if said primary server becomes unavailable, and wherein said primary server is the server that initially provides access to the resource; receiving a request from a communication initiator, requesting access to at least one of the resources; assigning a primary server to handle the access request; assigning a unique reservation identifier to the access request for storing by the primary server; wherein said unique reservation identifier must be provided to gain access to the at least one of the resources; wherein the unique reservation identifier comprises a target server name with a unique initiator-provided session identifier; following a failure of the primary sewer, receiving a request for a discovery operation from the communication initiator, said discovery operation attempting to identify a peer server that is capable of handling the access request; wherein checks of peer server status are performed by the communication initiator only in response to specific trigger conditions that indicate a possible failure of the primary server; determining which server failed by checking a status of the peer servers, responsive to the discovery operation; and assigning a secondary server to take over resource access operations on behalf of the primary server by: reassigning an identity of the primary sewer to the secondary server such that the secondary server reconfigures itself to respond to the resource access requests directed to the primary server; and sending to the communication initiator an identification of the failed server in association with a network address of the secondary server, such that the communication initiator is able to interact with the secondary server as if communicating with the primary server, by using the target name of the primary sewer and a session identifier; wherein the second server reproduces the unique reservation identifier by combining the failed target server name with the unique initiator-provided session identifier.