Methods, systems and computer program products for transferring security processing between processors in a cluster computing environment

Abstract

Methods, systems and computer program products provide for transferring network security based communications from a first distribution processor, which provides secure communications over a network in a distributed workload environment having target hosts which are accessed through the first distribution processor by a common network address, to a second distribution processor. Information sufficient to restart the transferred network security based communications at the second distribution processor is provided. Takeover of the common address by the second distribution processor is detected and existing network security based communications to the first distribution processor are terminated. The transferred communications are restarted at the second distribution processor utilizing the provided information. Both inbound and outbound network security based communications with target hosts utilizing the common network address are routed through the second distribution processor. Network security processing for both the inbound and the outbound network security based communications utilizing the common network address is performed at the second distribution processor.