Patent ID: 8151277

Claim:
A method for dynamically injecting an in-process agent into an application which is hosted by a virtual machine, comprising the steps of: at the virtual machine hosting the application, loading and starting a bootstrap agent during initialization of the virtual machine and before code of the application is loaded or processed, without modifying configuration data of the application; at the bootstrap agent, initiating a network connection to a management server, the management server being external to the virtual machine; using the bootstrap agent to request transmission of in-process agent binaries from the management server; at the management server, verifying that a version of the bootstrap agent and a version of the virtual machine are supported by the management server; if the version of the bootstrap agent and the version of the virtual machine are supported by the management server, then: using data concerning the version of the bootstrap agent and the version of the virtual machine to determine matching in process agent binaries for the bootstrap agent, wherein the matching in process agent binaries represent the in process agent; sending the matching in process agent binaries to the bootstrap agent using the network connection; at the bootstrap agent: receiving the in process agent binaries; loading the received in process agent binaries to the virtual machine without modifying configuration data of the application; initializing the in process agent binaries; and executing the in process agent binaries.