The claimed subject matter provides a method for operating a sleep management service. The method include identifying a set of guardians based on a local state for each of a plurality of compute nodes. The method also includes sending a wake request to all sleeping compute nodes in the identified set. The method further includes sending a request to become a guardian to all compute nodes in the identified set. Additionally, the method includes stopping a current guardian from being a guardian if the current guardian is less suitable than a threshold number of current guardians.