A system for use in a computing environment which includes a traffic director component , the traffic director comprising: one or more traffic director instances , which are configured to receive and communicate requests, from clients, to a plurality of origin servers having one or more pools each containing one or more resource servers ; a configuration configured to provide information about various elements of the traffic director instances and indicates that a particular origin server pool includes a particular resource server, where the configuration includes properties for each of the origin servers; an HTTP connection handler configured to receive HTTP requests from the clients; an HTTP engine configured to receive the HTTP requests from the HTTP connection handler; a reverse proxy module in the HTTP engine, wherein the reverse proxy module selects an origin server of the plurality of origin servers to which the requests should be directed and forwards the requests to the origin server; and a health check subsystem within the reverse proxy module, wherein the health check subsystem is configured, at a periodic health-check interval, to: send a HTTP health check request to each of its configured resource servers; receive a response from each configured resource server; send a dynamic-discovery health-check request to any new resource server within the pool; receive an appropriate response from each new resource server; and update the configuration accordingly, wherein the updated configuration includes that each new resource server inherit properties from previously configured origin servers. one or more traffic director instances , which are configured to receive and communicate requests, from clients, to a plurality of origin servers having one or more pools each containing one or more resource servers ; a configuration configured to provide information about various elements of the traffic director instances and indicates that a particular origin server pool includes a particular resource server, where the configuration includes properties for each of the origin servers; an HTTP connection handler configured to receive HTTP requests from the clients; an HTTP engine configured to receive the HTTP requests from the HTTP connection handler; a reverse proxy module in the HTTP engine, wherein the reverse proxy module selects an origin server of the plurality of origin servers to which the requests should be directed and forwards the requests to the origin server; and a health check subsystem within the reverse proxy module, wherein the health check subsystem is configured, at a periodic health-check interval, to: send a HTTP health check request to each of its configured resource servers; receive a response from each configured resource server; send a dynamic-discovery health-check request to any new resource server within the pool; receive an appropriate response from each new resource server; and update the configuration accordingly, wherein the updated configuration includes that each new resource server inherit properties from previously configured origin servers. send a HTTP health check request to each of its configured resource servers; receive a response from each configured resource server; send a dynamic-discovery health-check request to any new resource server within the pool; receive an appropriate response from each new resource server; and update the configuration accordingly, wherein the updated configuration includes that each new resource server inherit properties from previously configured origin servers. <EOS>