Assigning monitoring responsibilities in distributed systems using optimistic concurrency

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a set of instructions, which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to:

• receive, from a plurality of worker machines, a plurality of requests, each request from a worker machine indicating a respective work item to be assigned to that worker machine, wherein each work item identifies a respective alarm to be tracked by that worker machine;
• in response to receiving each request, perform an assignment attempt operation to control competition between worker machines, the assignment attempt operation configured to insert a reference to the worker machine that issued that request in a database record corresponding to the respective work item if and only if no more than one other reference to any of the plurality of worker machines has yet been inserted into the database record;
• and
• return a reply to the worker machine that issued each request, the reply indicating whether the assignment attempt operation succeeded, that worker machine configured to:
• (i) process the respective work item in response to a reply indicating success, so as to track for its respective alarm, and
• (ii) refrain from processing the respective work item in response to a reply indicating lack of success.

An apparatus comprising:

• network interface circuitry configured to communicate with a plurality of worker machines;
• memory coupled to processing circuitry configured to:
• receive, from the plurality of worker machines, a plurality of requests, each request from a worker machine indicating a respective work item to be assigned to that worker machine, wherein each work item identifies a respective alarm to be tracked by that worker machine;
• in response to receiving each request, perform an assignment attempt operation to control competition between worker machines, the assignment attempt operation configured to insert a reference to the worker machine that issued that request in a database record corresponding to the respective work item if and only if no more than one other reference to any of the plurality of worker machines has yet been inserted into the database record;
• and
• return a reply to the worker machine that issued each request, the reply indicating whether the assignment attempt operation succeeded, that worker machine configured to:
• (i) process the respective work item in response to a reply indicating success, so as to track for its respective alarm, and
• (ii) refrain from processing the respective work item in response to a reply indicating lack of success.