Abstract: A method for provisioning servers in a computer arrangement allows more than one administrator to utilize the servers and prevents the servers from being influenced by more than one administrator at the same time. The computer arrangement includes at least one server, at least one administrator operable to control the usage of the servers by making provisioning decisions, and a deployment server operable to provision the servers according to the provisioning decisions of the administrators. An administrator is required to exclusively reserve the server before the administration unit can use the server. This prevents the server from being used by two or more interfering administrators, meanwhile allowing a flexible assignment between servers and administrators.

Abstract: A computer arrangement for providing services to clients over a network includes: at least two servers, each server hosting at least one application, an automated administrator configured to automatically provision the servers to provide the services, and at least one network load balancer connected to the clients and the servers. The network load balancer is responsible for at least one of the services and is configured to gather state information on the state of the servers and/or the applications hosted on the servers and is operable to route incoming requests of clients to at least one of the servers. The network load balancer provides the automated administrator with the state information. The automated administrator provides the network load balancer with provisioning information regarding which servers are provisioned to provide the at least one service for which the network load balancer is responsible.