Patent ID: 8296771

Claim:
A method that executes in a computing system having a plurality of resource consumers and a plurality of resource providers, the method comprising: assigning two or more different first resource consumers of the plurality of resource consumers to a first consumer group name; assigning two or more different second resource consumers of the plurality of resource consumers to a second consumer group name; assigning two or more different first resource providers of the plurality of resource providers to a first provider group name; assigning two or more different second resource providers of the plurality of resource providers to a second provider group name; defining an intermediate mapping between the plurality of resource consumers and the plurality of resource providers using the consumer group names and the provider group names, wherein the intermediate mapping is expressed as a set of flavors, wherein the set of flavors includes application flavors, support flavors, and operating system flavors, and wherein the intermediate mapping associates the first resource consumers and the first resource providers with a first flavor and associates the second resource consumers and the second resource providers with a second flavor; creating, in the computing system, a new resource consumer to execute a program, wherein creating includes assigning one of the flavors to the new resource consumer; and allocating a resource to the new resource consumer from one or more of the resource providers whose flavor matches the flavor assigned to the new resource consumer.