US Patent 9760398 Automatic placement of virtual machine instances

A virtual computer system service receives a request from a customer to instantiate a virtual machine instance onto a computing device. The virtual computer system service obtains a set of preferences from the request that can be used for selecting the computing device from a variety of data zones. The virtual computer system service identifies one or more data zones where virtual machine instances of the customer are operating. Based on the set of preferences and the one or more data zones where the virtual machine instances are operating, the virtual computer system service selects a data zone where the virtual machine instance can be instantiated. The virtual computer system service uses a computing device in the selected data zone to instantiate the virtual machine instance.