Patent ID: 7483981

Claim:
In a distributed computing environment having a plurality of content server computer systems fielding requests for content from a plurality of content request handler computer systems, wherein a virtual partition system comprising a plurality of buckets resides at each of the content request handler computer systems and associates buckets with the content server computer systems, a method of adding an additional content server computer system to the plurality of content server computer systems fielding requests for content, the method comprising: randomly selecting a set of at least one bucket to be moved from a source content server computer system in the plurality of content server computer systems to the additional content server computer system; locking the set of at least one bucket to indicate write access is not permitted to content associated with the set of buckets; while continuing to direct read requests for content via the locked buckets, copying content associated with the locked set of buckets to the additional content server computer system according to a data dependency order of the content; associating the locked set of buckets with the additional content server computer system in the virtual partition system, the associating comprising placing a reference to a programming component in the set of buckets, wherein the programming component fields requests and directs the requests to the additional content server system; unlocking the set of buckets; after the buckets have been associated with the additional content computer system in the virtual partition system, directing requests for content to the additional content server computer system; and deleting the copied content from the source content server computer system data in a reverse order of the data dependency order of the content.