Patent ID: 8769075

Claim:
A method for use with an appliance that is under the control of a management tool, wherein the appliance comprises an integrated solution appliance having resources that include at least a console and a plurality of servers, said method comprising the steps of: providing the management tool with a cluster appliance manager (CAM), managing, with the management tool, the appliance when the appliance is used to implement a solution deployed thereon; furnishing the CAM with a cluster topology manager (CTM), acquiring, with the cluster topology manager, appliance level information, wherein the acquired information includes specified metadata pertaining to each server of said plurality of servers and wherein CTM initializes the management tool with base information, stored on a database of the management tool, pertaining to the integrated solution appliance and to a particular solution to be implemented thereon, wherein the base information includes a solution version and a start order, a stop order and an update order metadata, wherein the metadata further comprises objects of an appliance managed endpoint and an appliance system; and furnishing the CAM with a cluster operations manager (COM), interacting, by the cluster operations manager, with components of the management tool, selectively modifying, with information acquired by the CTM, one or more commands issued by the management tool, which respectively affect operation of the appliance.