The present invention discloses a method, system and article of manufacture for autonomic identification of an optimum hardware configuration for a Web infrastructure. A plurality of performance objectives and a plurality of best practice rules for the Web infrastructure are established first. Then, a search space and a current configuration performance index within the search space are established. Next, a database of available hardware models is searched for a best-fit configuration based on the established plurality of best practice rules and the established current configuration performance index. The performance data of the found best-fit configuration is calculated using a performance simulator and then compared to the established plurality of performance objectives. If the calculated performance data meet the established plurality of performance objectives, then the best-fit configuration is designated as the optimum hardware configuration. Otherwise, the search space is narrowed and searching is continued until such optimum hardware configuration is found.