An apparatus and method for building metadata using a heartbeat of a
clustered system are provided. The apparatus and method send portions of
metadata for a computer system resource, to each of the other computer
systems in the clustered system as a heartbeat data message. Upon
receiving the heartbeat data message having the portion of metadata, the
receiving computer systems store the portion of metadata in a temporary
storage until all of the metadata is received. In subsequent heartbeat
data messages, the remaining portions of the metadata are transmitted to
the computer systems which, upon receiving all portions of the metadata,
store the metadata in a secure location. If the sending computer system
were to fail, the metadata stored in the secure location is read and used
to takeover the resources of the failed computer system. In this way, the
processing cycles used to read in the metadata from the resources of the
failed computer system in the prior art are eliminated.
