Patent ID: 8839243

Claim:
A method for remediating overload in an over-committed computing environment, the method comprising: measuring resource usage of each of multiple virtual machines on each of at least one hypervisor in a computing environment; upon detection of a resource overload on one of the at least one hypervisor: determining at least one operation from a set of multiple operations that is to be taken for at least one of the multiple virtual machines on the hypervisor to remediate resource overload while increasing values of running virtual machines, wherein said determining comprises: computing a work value of each of the multiple virtual machines on the hypervisor, wherein the work value is defined as (i) 1/(resource usage) if the virtual machine was not quiesced during a given time period and (ii) infinity if the virtual machine was quiesced during the given time period; computing a cost value associated with each of the multiple operations for each of the multiple virtual machines on the hypervisor; and using (i) a ratio of the work value and resource usage of each of the multiple virtual machines, and (ii) the computed cost values as criteria for said determining; and sending a command to the hypervisor to issue the at least one operation; wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a computer device.