Patent ID: 8516495

Claim:
A domain management method for a virtualized computing environment, the method comprising: receiving, from at least a first domain advisor, a first set of placement constraints for a first domain monitored by the first domain advisor; receiving, from at least a second domain advisor, a second set of placement constraints for a second domain monitored by the second domain advisor, wherein the first domain is associated with a first system management domain related to at least one of performance, availability, security, financial or administrative domains in the virtualized computing environment, and wherein the second domain is associated with a second system management domain related to at least one of performance, availability, security, financial and administrative domains in the virtualized computing environment, and wherein the first system management domain is exclusive of the second system management domain; collating advice received from two or more domain advisors connected in the virtualized computing environment, wherein the collating comprises: selecting a first advice element for inclusion in a placement plan, wherein said advice element was received at the time T 1 from a first domain advisor and at the time T 1 the first advice element was non-conflicting with other advice elements in the placement plan; and deselecting the first advice element for inclusion in the placement plan, in favor of a second advice element received at the time T 2 , if the second advice element is conflicting with the first advice element, and is received from a second domain advisors that is higher in rank than the first domain advisor; resolving any conflicts among the advice received from said one or more domain advisors; generating the placement plan based on reconciled advice generated by resolving conflicts identified in the advice received from the domain advisors, wherein the placement plan comprises a plurality of operations for virtual machines in said virtualized computing environment; and executing the one or more operations in the placement plan, wherein one or more domain handlers may be called to update the virtualized computing environment before, during or after execution of one or more operations from among said plurality of operations in the plan.