Patent ID: 8849971

Claim:
A method, comprising: allocating a set of computing resources in a cloud computing environment to a virtual machine in the cloud computing environment; maintaining, by a processor, a record of computing resources in the cloud computing environment and in an additional cloud computing environment external to the cloud computing environment, wherein available computing resources in the cloud computing environment and the additional cloud computing environment are determinable from the record; receiving a request to instantiate an additional virtual machine in the cloud computing environment; determining, by the processor, in response to the request to instantiate the additional virtual machine, that the cloud computing environment lacks available computing resources to support the additional virtual machine based on the maintained record of computing resources; determining, by the processor, in response to the determination that the cloud computing environment lacks available computing resources to support the additional virtual machine, that a set of inactive reserve resources cannot support the additional virtual machine; determining, by the processor, in response to the determination that the inactive reserve resources of the cloud computing environment cannot support the additional virtual machine, that computing resources in the additional cloud external to the cloud computing environment are sufficient to support the additional virtual machine in view of the maintained record of computing resources and offers of availability from the computing resources in the additional cloud; instantiating, by the processor, the additional virtual machine using computing resources provided by the additional cloud; and tracking, by the processor, selected computing resources from the additional cloud used to provide the additional virtual machine.