Deploying virtual machine instances of a pattern to regions of a hierarchical tier using placement policies and constraints

A method, system and computer program product for deploying a pattern. A placement engine of a hierarchical tier selects the region(s) of a next lower tier based on placement policies and constraints at the next lower tier and availability of the artifacts required by the virtual machine instance(s) in the next lower tier utilizing the summarization of resource usage and availability at the next lower tier. The placement engine at the lowest tier selects the compute node(s) in the selected region(s) of the lowest tier to place the virtual machine instances of the pattern based on placement policies and constraints at the compute node level and availability of the artifacts required by the virtual machine instance(s) of the pattern in the compute node level. In this manner, the virtual machine instances of the pattern can be effectively deployed when the resources of the cloud environment are large and geographically dispersed.