Systems and methods to manage workloads and hardware resources in a data center or cloud. In one embodiment, a method includes a data center having a plurality of servers in a network. The data center provides a virtual machine for each of a plurality of users, each virtual machine to use a portion of hardware resources of the data center. The hardware resources include storage and processing resources distributed onto each of the plurality of servers. The method further includes sending messages amongst the servers, some of the messages being sent from a server including status information regarding a hardware resource utilization status of that server. The method further includes detecting a request from the virtual machine to handle a workload requiring increased use of the hardware resources, and provisioning the servers to temporarily allocate additional resources to the virtual machine, wherein the provisioning is based on status information provided by one or more of the messages.