Abstract: A system and method for a highly available timer service may include a timer database operable to store information on one or more timers. The system may further include a plurality of servers in a cluster, each server containing a failure detection service, a timer service and one or more applications. In one embodiment, each application may be operable to request and process one or more timer notifications from the timer service contained in the same server. Each failure detection service may also be operable to detect a failure of other servers in the cluster. In addition, each timer service may be operable to retrieve information on the one or more timers from the timer database, and to provide a timer notification to any application in the cluster in response to a notification from the failure notification service that a server has failed.