Patent ID: 8595331

Claim:
A distributed computing system comprising: a control node comprising at least one processor configured to provide autonomic control over a plurality of application nodes; wherein the control node comprises: an automation subsystem configured to control execution of instances of the software applications to the application nodes; a set of application image objects associated with a set of images of software applications, wherein each of the application image objects executes a set of functions to control deployment of one of the images in the set of images of software applications, and wherein an application programming interface common to each of the application image objects defines the set of functions; and an application governor configured to deploy an image of the set of images of software applications to a first application node of the plurality of application nodes at least in part by invoking one or more of the functions of one of the application image objects that controls deployment of the image of the software application, and wherein: the application governor deploys the image of the software application in response to instructions from the automation subsystem; and the one or more of the functions invoked by the application governor comprises at least one function configured to modify at least one configuration parameter associated with the first application node.