Heartbeat (computing)

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In computer science, a heartbeat is a periodic signal generated by hardware or software to indicate normal operation or to synchronize other parts of a computer system. Heartbeat mechanism is one of the common techniques in mission critical systems for providing high availability and fault tolerance of network services by detecting the network or systems failures of nodes or daemons which belongs to a network cluster—administered by a master server—for the purpose of automatic adaptation and rebalancing of the system by using the remaining redundant nodes on the cluster to take over the load of failed nodes for providing constant services. Usually a heartbeat is sent between machines at a regular interval in the order of seconds; a heartbeat message. If the endpoint does not receive a heartbeat for a time—usually a few heartbeat intervals—the machine that should have sent the heartbeat is assumed to have failed. Heartbeat messages are typically sent non-stop on a periodic or recurring basis...

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