US Patent 8661287 Automatically performing failover operations with a load balancer

A load balancer includes a failover logic unit to identify servers to execute services, generate and store in the load balancer a failover rule and a service rule, and to determine a failure in a first server that executes a first service responsive to a lack of response by the first server to a keepalive message sent by the load balancer to the first server. The load balancer can then perform an operation to cause an automatic failover of the first service to another server based on the failover and service rules.