Patent ID: 7743380

Claim:
A method for distributing profiling responsibilities for an application having a plurality of instances, comprising: identifying a plurality of computers that run corresponding instances of the application; providing a plurality of profiling metrics each of which is associated with a corresponding overhead; assigning, by a processor, a first one of the profiling metrics associated with a first overhead to a particular one of the instances, wherein the assigning comprises: if no profiling metric has been assigned to the particular instance, then the assigning is based on comparing a threshold to the first overhead to determine if the first overhead exceeds the threshold, else if at least one second profiling metric has been assigned to the particular instance, then the assigning is based on comparing the threshold to a second overhead that is an aggregate of the first overhead and a third overhead associated with the at least one second profiling metric that has been assigned to the particular instance, wherein comparing the threshold to the second overhead is to determine whether the second overhead exceeds the threshold, wherein assigning the first profiling metric to the particular instance causes data of the first profiling metric to be collected for the particular instance.