Patent ID: 7444459

Claim:
A system comprising: a cluster of physical processors wherein each of the physical processors is communicatively coupled to each other physical processor of the cluster; a plurality of virtual machines wherein each virtual machine is operable on any subset of the physical processors and wherein the plurality of virtual machines are distributed to operate over a plurality of the physical processors; a load balancer, communicatively coupled to the plurality of physical processors, the load balancer adapted to redistribute a virtual machine from a first subset of the physical processors to a different subset of the physical processors based on load factor information; and a storage system having a plurality of storage controllers, the storage system coupled to the physical processors, the storage system including a storage load factor information generator adapted to generate storage system load factor information relating to the storage controllers of the storage system, wherein the load factor information generator is communicatively coupled to the load balancer to apply the storage system load factor information to the load balancer for use therein to redistribute the virtual machine.