Patent ID: 8843914

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for managing host computing device, wherein the host computing device hosts one or more virtual machine instances, the method comprising: under control of one or more processors configured with specific executable instructions, obtaining, by a computing device management component, version information for at least one of an operating environment and software executing on a host computing device; determining, by the computing device management component, a time distribution of modifications to an operating environment or software applications executing on each computing device of a set of computing devices to implement a goal state for the set of host computing devices according to the version information; modifying, by computing device management component, version filter information to implement the determined time distribution of modifications; obtaining, by the computing device management component, version filter requests from each host computing devices included in the set of host computing devices, wherein version filter requests are transmitted by a local computing device management component on the host computing device and includes version information associated with a current configuration of the host computing device; for each of the host computing devices included in the set of host computing devices, obtaining version filter information corresponding to the requesting local computing device management component; determining whether the version information included in the version filter request corresponds to the obtained version filter information; and transmitting information responsive to the determination to the requesting local computing device management component.