Patent ID: 8732308

Claim:
A system for coordinating information between management entities, the system comprising: a processor and memory; management hardware for running at least one of the management entities; at least one management channel built on top of a physical channel and providing bidirectional communication of control information and data between the management entities, wherein one or more of the management entities include a management application running on a virtual machine, the at least one management channel including a front-end module running on the virtual machine and a back-end module running on a management virtual machine; at least one management broker implementing a coordination policy for coordinating information from one or more of the management entities and making actuation decisions based on the information and the coordination policy; at least one management agent communicating information from the management application on the at least one management channel for transmission to the at least one management broker; and machine-readable instructions stored in the memory and executed by the processor to: disconnect the front-end module of the virtual machine and the back-end module of the management virtual machine, and connect a new front-end module of a new virtual machine and a new back-end module of a new management virtual machine, wherein the disconnecting and the connecting are transparent to any management agent and any management broker running on the virtual machine.