Patent ID: 7478149

Claim:
A method comprising: determining whether no single system among a plurality of systems meets a resource requirement for hosting a first application among a plurality of applications running on the plurality of systems; and if the determining indicates that no single system among the plurality of systems meet the resource requirement, using a priority of the first application and a respective priority for each of the plurality of applications running on the plurality of systems for identifying a resource to free, wherein the resource is one of a plurality of resources and is used by at least one of the plurality of applications, and wherein each of the plurality of resources is associated with at least one of the plurality of systems, determining whether freeing the resource would cause a first system, associated with the resource, among the plurality of systems to meet the resource requirement, freeing the resource in response to the identifying the resource and in response to a determination that freeing the resource would cause the first system to meet the resource requirement, and hosting the first application on the first system using the resource.