Patent ID: 8572439

Claim:
At a computer system including one or more processors and system memory, the computer system being one of a plurality of computer systems in a distributed system, a method for configuring the computer system to monitor a portion of an appliance implemented at the distributed system, the method comprising: an act of accessing an appliance definition file, the appliance definition file defining a plurality of different types of nodes, functionality of the plurality of different types of nodes to be integrated together to implement the appliance; an act of selecting a type of node, from among the plurality of different types of nodes, that is to be implemented at the computer system; an act of reading a portion of the appliance definition file defining functionality for the selected node type; an act of implementing the selected node type at the computer system in accordance with the defined functionality; an act of reading a health file that identifies components that are to be monitored for the selected node type; an act of loading a monitor agent at the computer system to monitor the identified components; an act collecting health information indicating the health of the identified components; and an act of transferring the collected health information to a repository, the repository aggregating collected health information for identified components within the plurality of computer systems so as to represent a logical health view of the appliance, the logical health view abstracted from the identified components within the plurality of computer systems.