A method and mechanism for failing over applications in a clustered computing system is provided. In an embodiment, the methodology is implemented by a high-availability failover mechanism. Upon detecting a failure of an application that is currently designated to be executing on a particular node of the system, the mechanism may attempt to failover the application onto a different node. The mechanism keeps track of a number of nodes on which a failover of the application is attempted. Then, based on one or more factors including the number of nodes on which a failover of the application is attempted, the mechanism may cease to attempt to failover the application onto a node of the system.