Patent ID: 7281045

Claim:
A computer program product for fulfilling a resource provisioning request in a data processing system, the computer program product comprising computer executable code stored on a tangible, computer readable storage medium, the computer executable code comprising: computer executable, code for discovering attributes of servers available for adding to a server cluster responsive to the resource provisioning request by scanning resources on a network of the processing system, wherein the discovered attributes include quantitative attributes, the quantitative attributes describing the servers in terms of respective hardware and software states thereof; computer executable code, for specifying characteristics of a requested resource for the resource provisioning request, wherein the specified characteristics, the quantitative characteristics describing the requested resource in categorical terms including i) a server type, ii) a resource provisioning priority defining how quickly a server is to be added to a server cluster responsive to the resource provisioning request, and iii) a resource operational response time category defining how quickly operational requests are to be fulfilled by the added server; computer executable code for deriving a set of attributes from the specified qualitative characteristics by reading a set of attributes defined in a profile for the server type of the specified qualitative characteristics, the set of attributes in the profile being defined in terms including the same terms as the quantitative attributes of the discovered server, wherein the derived attributes are indicative of components of a server ideally suited to fulfill the resource provisioning request; computer executable code for evaluating the discovered attributes associated with respective ones of available servers against the attributes derived from the specified characteristics; and computer executable code for selecting, based at least in part on the evaluation, one of the available server to satisfy the resource provisioning request, wherein the attributes of the selected server best match the attributes derived from the specified characteristics.