A generalized architecture for a highly available transaction processing system that combines commercially available components and software components specifically developed to implement the architecture into an integrated, highly available transaction processing system that minimizes planned and unplanned downtime, minimizes data loss in the event of failures, provides proactive monitoring of both hardware and software components of the highly available transaction processing system, provides automated recovery actions that involve fast failover, either locally to an Inactive Node, or remotely to a Standby Site, and provides an easy-to-use graphical-user-interface-based management interface that provides service-oriented views of the state of the system, with context-directed commands and meta-commands to guide managers in execution of their tasks.