A system for fault tolerant execution of an application program in a server network, which includes: a first server for executing the application program; a cluster network database, coupled to the first server; an object, stored in the cluster network database, which represents the program and contains information pertaining to the program; a failure detection module which detects a failure of the first server; a second server, coupled to the cluster network database; and a failover module which loads the application program in the second server upon detection of the failure of the first server. The information contained within the object includes: a host server attribute which identifies which server is currently executing the program; a primary server attribute which identifies which server is primarily responsible for executing the program; and a backup server attribute which identifies which server is a backup server for executing the program if the primary server experiences a failure.