Patent ID: 8417670

Claim:
A method for dynamically managing a persistent membership of a coordination group in a distributed environment, the coordination group including a number of sites included in the persistent membership, with one or more of the sites including a database and a registrar, the method comprising: receiving, by a registrar of a first site that is a member of the persistent membership, a Membership Request from an entrant seeking to become a member of the persistent membership, the Membership Request including an action identifier describing a last action applied to an entrant database associated with the entrant; modifying, by the registrar of the first site, the persistent membership for the entrant; responsive to the registrar receiving the Membership Request, disconnecting the registrar of the first site from the coordination group and inhibiting, by a distributed lock manager, updates to a first database while cotemporaneous to the inhibition of the updates the registrar of the first site initializes the entrant database for the entrant based at least in part on the last action identified by the action identifier in the Membership Request; and reconnecting, by the registrar of the first site, to the coordination group after initialization of the entrant database.