US Patent 7526479 Configuration manager in enterprise computing system

A system and method are described for managing a plurality of application servers. In one embodiment, the application servers are organized into groups referred to as “instances.” Each instance includes a group of redundant application servers and a dispatcher for distributing service requests to each of the application servers. A group of instances may be organized as a “cluster.” Each server includes a configuration manager to facilitate changes to configuration information within the cluster. The configuration manager may include a configuration cache and monitor its consistency with respect to other instances within the cluster.