An apparatus and method is described for identification of applications that benefit from HA features and assisting a system administrator in the installation of the applications in an application server with HA features configured properly for run-time operation. In preferred embodiments, an HA policy engine allows a system administrator to set up one or more general HA policies in a policy table. In a preferred embodiment, an HA run-time engine uses the policies in the policy table to configure new applications being installed in the application server. Other embodiments include an application inspection unit that introspects the byte code of the application as well as deployment descriptors to determine which features and APIs are being used that can take advantage of HA functions.