answersLogoWhite

0

A heartbeat is a message sent between machines at a regular interval of the order of seconds. If a heartbeat isn't received for a time -- usually a few heartbeat intervals -- the machine that should have sent the heartbeat is assumed to have failed. A heartbeat protocol is generally used to negotiate and monitor the availability of a resource, such as a floating IP address. Typically when a heartbeat starts on a machine it will perform an election process with other machines on the heartbeat network to determine which, if any machine owns the resource. On heartbeat networks of more than two machines it is important to take into account partitioning, where two halves of the network could be functioning but not able to communicate with each other. In a situation such as this it is important that the resource is only owned by one machine, not one machine in each partition.

As a heartbeat is intended to be used to indicate the health of a machine it is important that the heartbeat protocol and the transport that it runs on is as reliable as possible. Effecting a fail-over because of a false alarm may, depending on the resource, be highly undesirable. It is also important to react quickly to an actual failure, so again it is important that the heartbeat is reliable. For this reason it is often desirable to have heartbeat running over more than one transport, for instance an ethernet segment using UDP/IP, and a serial link.

User Avatar

Wiki User

12y ago

What else can I help you with?

Related Questions

I had a transvaginal ultrasound today for something nonpregnancy realtes and heard a heartbeat was that my heartbeat or should I be waiting for a call from my dotor.?

that is not a heartbeat of a baby. it was your heartbeat..had the same thing happen to me! that is not a heartbeat of a baby. it was your heartbeat..had the same thing happen to me!


Do you feel heartbeat?

What heartbeat :l


What the difference between protocol stack and protocol suite?

- In your own words, define the term 'protocol' and what is the difference between protocol and protocol suite


How is pulse related to heartbeat?

Pulse = heartbeat


When did In a Heartbeat end?

In a Heartbeat ended on 2001-03-25.


Is heartbeat a hyphenated word?

No...heartbeat is one word.


Why does the rate of heartbeat change?

Why does the rate of heartbeat change?


How many pages does My Heartbeat have?

My Heartbeat has 160 pages.


What is the duration of In a Heartbeat?

The duration of In a Heartbeat is 1800.0 seconds.


Is heartbeat a compound word?

Heartbeat is a compound word.


What is most familiar protocol to you?

There are various protocols ftp: file transfer protocol smtp: simple mail transfer protocol pop3: post office protocol ip: internet protocol tcp: transmission control protocol ospf: open shortest path first igrp: interior gateway routing protocol eigrp: enhanced interior gateway routing protocol rip: routing information protocol http: hyper text transfer protocol udp: user datagram protocol icmp: internet control message protocol


Is HTML protocol or not?

HTML is a protocol