Patent ID: 8443077

Claim:
A method for managing a hosting system comprising a plurality of nodes for hosting a plurality of virtual machines, the method comprising: identifying a particular size of disk volume to monitor within the hosting system; determining, from a plurality of disk volumes that exist on the plurality of nodes of the hosting system, whether a number of pre-built disk volumes of the particular size that are (i) built on hardware resources of the plurality of nodes of the hosting system and (ii) not allocated to specific virtual machines falls below a threshold number of available disk volumes, wherein each pre-built disk volume is available for deploying a different virtual machine specified as having the particular size; when the number of pre-built disk volumes of the particular size falls below the threshold, automatically determining at least one particular node from the plurality of nodes on which to build a new disk volume of the particular size; and sending instructions to the particular node to build the disk volume of the particular size.