Patent ID: 7349965

Claim:
A method of advertising capabilities of data centers, comprising: registering respective capability data sets to a computing arrangement for a plurality of data centers, wherein each capability data set indicates resources available at one of the data centers; wherein the resources include hardware and software resources, and at least one of the capability data sets specifies respective numbers of servers in two or more classes of servers and a quantity of storage; wherein each capability data set includes a subset that has mandatory information and a subset that has optional information, wherein the mandatory information includes at least a data center identifier and the optional information specifies each resource available at the data center identified by the identifier; receiving queries at the computing arrangement from one or more of the plurality of data centers; wherein each query specifies information to be matched to at least one of the mandatory information and the optional information of the plurality of capability data sets; wherein at least one of the queries specifies a number of servers in a class of servers and a quantity of storage; and providing in response to a query, each registered capability data set that matches the query.