| CPC G06F 9/45558 (2013.01) [G06F 9/4881 (2013.01); G06F 2009/4557 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims | 

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               1. A method of executing a periodic task of a service having service instances replicated across hosts in a cluster of a virtualized computing system, the service instances executing in pods implemented by virtual machines (VMs) on the hosts, the method comprising: 
            persisting, by ping tasks of the service instances, records in a pod information table of a database, the records including pod identifiers of the pods and leader indicators, the database configured such that the leader indicator in only one of the records can be set to true; 
                determining, by a first ping task of the ping tasks, a leaderless condition in that the leader indicator in each of the records is false; 
                setting to true, by the first ping task in response to the leaderless condition, the leader indicator in a first record of the records having a first pod identifier of the pod identifiers for a first pod of the pods in which the first ping task executes; and 
                executing the periodic task in the first pod to the exclusion of each other of the pods. 
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