A system includes a computer processor that is configured to implement an upper layer stateful application network journaling process. The process includes recording and managing individual client actions on each server in a network. The recording and managing of the individual client actions executes at an application layer of a network protocol stack of the network. The process also includes recording and managing a server status snapshot on a per client basis. The recording and managing of the server status snapshot executes at the application layer of the network protocol stack of the network.