Patent ID: 8185624

Claim:
A computing system comprising: a plurality of clusters, each containing a corresponding plurality of servers, all the servers in a same cluster requiring installation of and being installed with a corresponding set of required softwares; a plurality of free server pools, each containing a corresponding plurality of servers, all the servers in a same free server pool being pre-installed with a corresponding set of pre -installed softwares; and an administrator system operable to: maintain a setup data indicating the respective pre-installed software sets installed on the corresponding ones of said plurality of free server pools; receive a request to add a server to a first cluster contained in said plurality of clusters, wherein the servers provisioned with the corresponding set of pre-installed software are grouped into corresponding free server pools before said request is received; compute a respective difference of the set of required softwares for said first cluster and the pre-installed software sets installed on the corresponding ones of said plurality of free server pools based on said setup data; determine a first free server pool of said plurality of free server pools based on the computed differences; select a first server in said determined first free server pool and to install a difference of the corresponding required set of softwares of the first cluster and the corresponding pre-installed set of software of the first free server pool, wherein said first free server pool is determined first and then said first server is selected from said first free server pool; add said first server, with the corresponding set of required softwares installed, to said first cluster in response to receiving said request, wherein at least some of the servers in said plurality of clusters and server pools and said administrator system contain a corresponding processor and a corresponding memory.