System for monitoring and reporting performance of hosts and applications and selectively configuring applications in a resource managed system

Software stored on at least one host for converting N networked hosts into a resource managed system instantiating M managed characteristic applications, comprising:

• a first function group which monitors the N hosts and network resources, the first function group running on the N hosts;
• a second function group which provides general-purpose application event reporting and event correlation capabilities, the second function group running on the M characteristic applications themselves and reporting to daemons running on the N hosts;
• a third function group which provides the reasoning and decision-making capabilities for the resource managed system;
• and
• a fourth function group which provides program control capabilities permitting starting, stopping, and configuring of selected ones of the M managed characteristic applications on respective ones of the N hosts in the resource managed system,
• wherein:
• the first function group includes host monitor functions instantiated by first selected ones of the N hosts which generate first data corresponding to performance of all hosts and network devices in the distributed environment;
• the second function group includes application monitoring functions instantiated by corresponding ones of the N hosts which generate second data indicative of performance of the M managed characteristic applications;
• and
• one of the first and the second function groups provides metric functions instantiated by second selected ones of the N hosts which generate performance metrics based on the first and the second data and provides the performance metrics to the third function group.