Patent ID: 8843935

Claim:
A system for automatically selecting hosts and datastores for deployment of a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), said system comprising: a memory area associated with a computing device, said memory area storing an inventory of hosts and datastores, said inventory describing resources associated with the hosts and datastores; and a processor programmed to: receive a request to select at least one candidate datastore for a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) for deployment, said request identifying a source VM from which the plurality of VMs is to be created and at least one host associated with the plurality of VMs; determine resource requirements for the plurality of VMs based on the identified source VM; automatically select the candidate datastore from a plurality of datastores accessible to the host based on a comparison of the resource requirements and an assessment of resources associated with the plurality of datastores from the inventory; automatically deploy the plurality of VMs on the host and the selected candidate datastore; monitor the inventory and updating, during deployment process of the plurality of VMs, the assessment of the resources in the inventory based on changes of resource availability; automatically select, during said deployment process, another candidate datastore accessible to the host based on a comparison of the resource requirements and the updated assessment of the resources in the inventory prior to completion of said deployment process and complete deployment of the plurality of VMs on the selected another candidate datastore.