Provisioning and managing a cluster deployed on a cloud

A computer-implemented system comprising:

• a cluster launch detector to detect that a clustered computing application has been launched on a cluster of nodes, each node in the cluster being a virtual instance of a machine within a virtualization service, the clustered computing application comprising:
• a load balancing tier comprising a load balancer executing on a first node in the cluster,
• an application tier comprising an application server executing on a second node in the cluster, and
• a database tier comprising a database server executing on a third node in the cluster;
• a cluster status monitor to monitor status of the nodes in the cluster to detect availability of the database server within the virtualization service;
• a publishing module to issue, in response to the detecting availability of the database server, a notification message addressed to the second node executing the application server, the notification message including information for connecting to the database server and information for discovering nodes in the cluster;
• a configuration module to configure the load balancer, the load balancer to deliver messages to the second node executing the application server;
• and
• a cluster manager to:
• detect a request to change a size of the cluster, and
• perform the change in response to the request.

A tangible machine-readable storage medium in communication with at least one processor, the tangible machine-readable storage medium having instructions which when executed by the at least one processor, data to cause a machine to perform operations comprising:

• detecting that a clustered computing application has been launched on a cluster of nodes, each node in the cluster being a virtual instance of a machine within a virtualization service, the clustered computing application comprising:
• a load balancing tier comprising a load balancer executing on a first node in file cluster,
• an application tier comprising an application server executing on a second node in the cluster, and
• a database tier comprising a database server executing on a third node in the cluster;
• automatically determining, using a rules engine, that a new node is to be added to the cluster, the new node to execute the application server;
• causing a new virtual instance of a machine to be started, the new instance executing the application server;
• issuing, in response to detecting availability of the new node, a notification message addressed to the new node executing the application server, the notification message including information for connecting to the database server and information for discovering nodes in the cluster;
• and
• configuring the load balancer, the load balancer to deliver messages to the application server.