Patent ID: 7912873

Claim:
A computer apparatus for managing a multitier compute infrastructure, the computer apparatus comprising: a processor; a multitier topology map executable by the processor identifying components from at least two different tiers of the multitier compute infrastructure and indicating relationships between the components including at least one cross-tier relationship between the components, wherein the multitier topology map comprises: (i) network objects identifying network components from a network tier of the multitier compute infrastructure; (ii) compute objects identifying compute components from a compute tier of the multitier compute infrastructure; and (iii) application objects identifying application components from an application tier of the multitier compute infrastructure, wherein the relationships include at least one application-level dependency on an application component, wherein the application component in turn has a dependency on the network components or the compute components, and the application-level dependency is defined relative to the application component and inherits the dependency on the network components or the compute components; an interface module executable by the processor communicably coupled to the multitier topology map for accessing the multitier topology map, wherein the interface module comprises: (i) a build engine for building the multitier topology map; (ii) a topology manager communicably coupled to the multitier topology map for maintaining the multitier topology map; and (iii) a query module for answering queries concerning the multitier topology map; and a logical cluster object identifying a logical cluster of components.