Patent ID: 7457984

Claim:
A method in a computing system for recovering from a failure when transferring a resource from a first server to a second server, the method comprising: indicating that the resource is to be transferred from the first server to the second server; starting at an initial step execution of a multi-step procedure that effects the transferring of the resource from the first server to the second server as indicated and updating of a directory server that currently references the first server as repository of the resource to reference the second server as repository of the resource, each step of the procedure setting a state and being idempotent such that re-execution of the step with the set state will have the same result as the initial execution of the step, the procedure including copying the resource from the first server to the second server, deleting the resource from the first server, and setting the directory server to reference the second server; when an error occurs, restarting at the initial step the execution of the procedure without rolling back state of the previously executed steps so that each step executed after the error occurs will have the same result as when executed before the error occurs; and when the execution of the procedure completes, indicating that the resource is not being transferred from the first server.