Patent ID: 8032504

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising software instructions for managing tasks for a distributed computing system, which, when executed on a processor, performs a method, the method comprising: receiving, by a management server executing on a server computing system, a task descriptor file comprising: a task type identifier associated with one of a plurality of task types, and a task type operations list defining at least one operation to be executed on at least one node of the distributed computing system; determining, based at least in part on the task descriptor file, that the task type identifier is associated with at least one presentation mechanism; determining, based at least in part on the task descriptor file, that the task type identifier is associated with at least one execution mechanism; receiving, by the management server, a request from a first client computing system in the distributed computing system to create a first task definition, wherein the request comprises the task type identifier; creating, in response to the receiving the request to create the first task definition, a unique task identifier using at least a portion of the request; providing, to the first client computing system, the at least one presentation mechanism associated with the task type identifier, wherein the first client computing system, in response to the providing, uses the at least one presentation mechanism to obtain definitional information comprising a subset of operations from the task type operations list, wherein the subset of operations is arranged by the first client computing system to accomplish a task, and wherein the first client computing system generates the first task definition using the definitional information; receiving, from the first client computing system, the first task definition by the management server; storing, by the management server, the first task definition in a memory storage device operatively connected to the server computing system; receiving, by the management server, a job comprising a reference to the first task definition and a node selection criteria; retrieving, by the management server, the first task definition from the memory storage device using the reference to the first task definition; extracting, from the first task definition, the subset of operations; determining, by the management server using the node selection criteria, at least one target node of the distributed computing system; and executing each of the subset of operations on the at least one target node.