Patent ID: 8146080

Claim:
In a computing environment comprising one or more physical computing devices, a method of assembling virtual machines residing on the one or more physical computing devices together as a system instantiated for a common computing goal, comprising: configuring pluralities of said virtual machines together as assemblies, each assembly instantiable to provide a tessellated application, wherein said tessellated applications are interconnected to form said system for accomplishing said common computing goal and each virtual machine is configured for implementing a defined role without overlap in functionality with respect to the common computing goal; conditionally linking at least two applications of said system together, said conditionally linking including defining an outgoing virtual machine of a first application of the system and an incoming virtual machine of a second application of the system and instantiating said incoming virtual machine when said system is initiated in order to initialize a communication channel between the incoming virtual machine and the outgoing virtual machine without instantiating virtual machines of said second application other than said incoming virtual machine; and instantiating, by said incoming virtual machine, said other virtual machines of said second application in response to receiving an actionable request from said outgoing virtual machine for one or more services provided by said second application.