Patent ID: 8260830

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions that when executed by a computer control the computer to perform a method, the method comprising: monitoring control of an arbitration (ARB) block by an active file system manager (FSM) where control of the ARB block is based, at least in part, on a timer bounded ARB protocol, where the timer bounded ARB protocol includes re-branding the ARB block within 0.5 seconds; requesting permission from a standby file system portmapper (FSMPM) to restart a dead-man timer for the active FSM, where the dead-man timer is set to 0.5 seconds; selectively restarting the dead-man timer based, at least in part, on the permission from the standby FSMPM; and selectively forcing a hardware reset of an apparatus running the active FSM upon expiration of the dead-man timer.