In general, this disclosure describes techniques of managing resources in a service-oriented distributed computing system. As described in this disclosure, one or more control nodes provide for the efficient and automated allocation and management of resources within the distributed computing system. In order to provide automated allocation and management of computing functions and resources, a control node uses a set of governors. This set of governors includes a set of service governors to govern services used in the distributed computing system. The set of governors also includes a set of resource governors that govern individual resources of the services in the distributed computing system. The service governors and the resource governors may be implemented using finite state machines.