The component locator can be the backbone of a distributed system where software components finds each others on the LAN by service type, for example a storage consumer could query the component locator for the location of a storage manager or the location of a cache manager. Services can register and unregister dynamically from the Locator, each locator maintain a replicated database of running services and detects / maintain the state of the available services. If a machine goes down the requests for the service(s) that were hosted on that machine will automatically be routed to another suitable computer. Conversely, if a new machine or service gets added, the Locator will automatically load-balance requests across the available services. 19 performance counters.