Patent ID: 8869132

Claim:
A method for executing change operations across a plurality of servers in a transaction-safe manner, the method comprising: specifying change operations for a collection of server objects in a transaction package, wherein the server objects comprise at least one of server files and configuration file entries; identifying two or more target servers for execution of the change operations specified in the transaction package; specifying parameter values specific to the target servers for each of the identified target servers in a parameter file; first, communicating a test transaction package to a virtual server agent, the test transaction package including the parameter file and an instruction set without the server files or any of the server objects; executing a test run with a set of tests to see if the instruction set can be carried out by the virtual server agent before making any changes on the target servers, the tests including substituting named parameters for each of the identified target servers with values from the parameter file; and after completing the test run, transferring the transaction package to the virtual server agent for execution of the specified change operations on each of the identified target servers.