Patent ID: 8312466

Claim:
A system for restricting resources consumed by ghost agents within a grid computing environment, comprising: at least one processor; and a computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions for causing the at least one processor to perform the steps of: identifying a host, wherein said host is a software object operating within said grid environment and movable from one grid to another grid within the grid environment; associating a ghost agent with the host, wherein said ghost agent is configured to execute at least one operation, the at least one operation comprising replicating and recording at least one action of said host, and wherein the ghost agent follows the movement of the host; identifying computing resources used by the ghost agent; determining usage values for computing resources used by the ghost agent; ascertaining a resource utilization for said ghost agent based the usage values for the computing resources; comparing said resource utilization to a usage threshold value pre-established for the ghost agent, wherein the usage threshold value defines a maximum resource utilization value permitted; and reducing a quantity of the computing resources used by the ghost agent if it is determined that the resource utilization value exceeds the usage threshold value, wherein the ghost agent can be deactivated and reactivated, and wherein the step of reducing further comprises queuing attempted operations of the ghost agent during deactivation and executing operations from the queue after the ghost agent is reactivated.