Patent ID: 8824286

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a local network aware (NA) global load balancing (GLB) component configured to: associate with a local data center (DC); receive a request from an end user via a network; communicate with a remote NA GLB component associated with a remote DC to obtain application resource information associated with remote servers positioned in the remote DC; communicate with an intra-DC resource information component associated with the local DC to obtain application resource information associated with local servers positioned in the local DC; communicate with an application control gateway (ACG) associated with the local DC to obtain network resource information describing routes between the end user, the remote servers, and the local servers; select a server to respond to the request, wherein the responding server is selected from a group of servers comprising a plurality of the local servers and a plurality of the remote servers, and wherein the responding server is selected based on the application resource information of the local servers and remote servers and the network resource information; and select a route in the network for communicating data between the selected responding server and the end user based on the network resource information.