Patent ID: 7356602

Claim:
A method for managing and controlling allocation and de-allocation of resources based on a guaranteed amount of resource and additional resources based on a best effort for a plurality of customers, said method comprising: dynamically allocating server resources for a plurality of customers, such that said resources received by a customer are dynamically controlled and said customer receives a guaranteed minimum amount of resources as specified under a service level agreement (SLA), wherein said best effort is defined in said SLA as a range of service to be provided to said customer if said server resources are currently available; and designating a service level agreement (SLA) on a server resource for a customer as a form (Smin#(i), Smax#(i), Mbounds(i)), where Smin#(i) denotes a guaranteed minimum amount of server resources, Smax(i) denotes an upper bound on an amount of server resources that a customer desires to obtain when free resources are available, and Mbounds(i) that includes a low bound (Mlowbound(i)) and a high bound (Mhighbound(i)) designating bounds on a service level metric for allocating resources beyond the minimum amount Smin#(i) for each i-th customer.