Patent ID: 8051170

Claim:
A method in a computing node, comprising: determining by the computing node an available node capacity for the computing node relative to any resource groups having been joined by the computing node, each resource group having a corresponding resource requirement that is necessary for any computing node joining the resource group to allocate for providing a corresponding distributed computing service within a network; selectively creating and joining by the computing node a new resource group, as a first of the resource groups, based at least on the computing node determining that the corresponding resource requirement is less than the available node capacity; selectively joining by the computing node, within the network, a second of the resource groups based on the computing node determining the corresponding resource requirement of the second resource group being less than the available node capacity; and executing by the computing node the distributed computing services for the resource groups having been joined by the computing node, according to the respective resource requirements, each computing node retaining its own control to decide whether to join or leave any of the resource groups.