Patent ID: 8087025

Claim:
A method comprising: determining workload requirements for a workload; creating, by a computer system, an ant including the workload requirements; and using the ant to select a resource-on-demand system from a plurality of resource-on-demand systems to host the workload based on a probability the resource-on-demand system is operable to satisfy the workload requirements, wherein using the ant to select a resource-on-demand system includes, the ant traversing a path in an overlay network, wherein the path includes a plurality of nodes in the overlay network and the overlay network is organized in a hierarchy comprising a plurality of levels; receiving information about corresponding resource-on-demand systems from the plurality of nodes in the overlay network, wherein the receiving of the information comprises receiving information about corresponding resource-on-demand systems from a plurality of nodes in a first level in the hierarchy; determining whether any of the corresponding resource-on-demand systems is operable to satisfy the workload requirements; and in response to none of the corresponding resource-on-demand systems being operable to satisfy the workload requirements, determining whether any of corresponding resource-on-demand systems for nodes in the overlay network in a lower-level in the hierarchy is operable to satisfy the workload requirements; determining a probability to satisfy the workload requirements for each resource-on-demand system corresponding to each traversed overlay node; and selecting one of the resource-on-demand systems to host the workload based on the determined probabilities.