Patent ID: 8239509

Claim:
A method comprising: instantiating, by a cloud management server device managing a network cloud, a virtual appliance monitor in the network cloud, wherein the virtual appliance monitor is instantiated separately from a set of virtual appliances operating in the network cloud and configured to monitor each virtual appliance of the set of virtual appliances; receiving, by the virtual appliance monitor, appliance state information representing an execution state of a virtual appliance of the set of virtual appliances instantiated in the network cloud, wherein the virtual appliance comprises a set of applications and a reduced operating system configured to support the set of applications; determining, by the virtual appliance monitor, that the execution state of the virtual appliance is caused by at least one of the set of applications being an old version; generating, by the virtual appliance monitor, a control action that directs a version update of the at least one of the set of applications; and providing, by the virtual appliance monitor, the control action to the virtual appliance to cause the at least one of the set of applications to be updated to a current version.