Abstract: This computer implemented software invention supervises networked system resources with the goal of maximizing service availability, providing on-demand and uninterrupted access to service, and minimizing the down time due to failures. It is a cluster-wide solution that co-ordinates the states and activities of resources, assigns availability roles, implements recovery from failures, and implements overall system policy. To do this, it maintains a system model of the system's physical and logical configuration and models the resources using managed objects that provides an extensive representation of the states, roles, and relationships of the systems resources.

Abstract: A system and method of monitoring and controlling a variety of hardware and software components in both a computer system and in a linked set of multiple computer systems (70, 72, 74). The components are imbued with methods that allow them to communicate with a component management database [FIGS. 1 and 14] that in turn is used by a configuration manager [40]. The components can describe their parameters, their relationships with other components, and their performance metrics. With this information the configuration manager can monitor and control these components to maximize the availability of the system or the network.