US Patent 7555544 Implementation of affinities in high availability computer system clusters

A system includes a cluster having a plurality of nodes wherein at least one of the nodes is a candidate node, a plurality of resource groups, a clustering mechanism executing on the cluster configured to activate a first resource group of the plurality of resource groups on the candidate node, and a resource group affinity of the plurality of resource groups, wherein the resource group affinity comprises a unidirectional association between the first resource group of the plurality of resource groups and a second resource group of the plurality of resource groups.