Patent ID: 8880679

Claim:
A method comprising: automatically determining, by a computer system, a threshold value for an operational metric of a web server, the determining comprising: logging information related to a plurality of requests received by the web server over a period of time; and applying one or more heuristics-based rules to the logged information in order to determine an appropriate value for the threshold value; identifying a time interval during which additional web servers should be provisioned; determining a pattern of high web server load based at least in part on the logged information related to the plurality of requests and the determined threshold value; generating a policy based at least in part on the determined pattern, the policy specifying the identified time interval; subsequent to automatically determining the threshold value, monitoring, by the computer system, the operational metric as requests are received by the web server; during the time interval, when the operational metric exceeds the threshold value: provisioning, by the computer system, one or more additional web servers; and routing, by the computer system, a portion of the requests to the one or more additional web servers; and after the time interval, decommissioning at least a portion of the one or more additional web servers that were provisioned during the time interval.