Patent ID: 8301742

Claim:
A distributed computing system, comprising: a plurality of computing nodes interconnected in a network, wherein the computing nodes comprise a plurality of servers forming a server cluster that provides a shared pool of server resources for executing data processing tasks, and an automated resource management system to manage the plurality of servers; wherein the automated resource management system comprises: a performance manager that controls allocation of server resources and placement of workload on a set of servers in the server cluster according to performance constraints; a power manager that controls power states and usage of servers in the server cluster according to power consumption constraints, wherein the performance manager and power manager collaborate via a messaging scheme during run-time execution of data processing tasks to coordinate management, control and redistribution of workload placement among the servers and dynamically determine a tradeoff between performance level and power usage that meets power and performance objectives, the messaging scheme being configured for requesting and transferring control of the servers between the performance manager and the power manager to redistribute the workload placement among the servers to achieve the tradeoff.