Patent ID: 7499987

Claim:
A node activation method, comprising: reading an identifier from a shared storage node to determine an identified node, wherein the identifier is associated with a chassis management module node; activating the identified node if the identifier indicates that the identified node was previously active; if the identified node was not previously active, then selecting one of a plurality of nodes as active based on an address of the one of the plurality of nodes; writing an identifier, associated with the one of the plurality of nodes, to the shared storage node if the one of the plurality of nodes is not indicated by the identifier read from the shared storage node; rewriting the identifier of the one of the plurality of nodes to the shared storage node periodically if the identified node is initially active; and selecting the one of the plurality of nodes as active if the identifier of the one of the plurality of nodes remains in the shared storage node after a predetermined period of time and a last active node has not informed the one of the plurality of nodes that the last active node was active within the predetermined period of time.