1. A method of administering a plurality of virtual machines (‘VMs’) in a distributed computing environment, the distributed computing environment comprising a plurality of hosts, one or more of the hosts executing a virtual machine monitor (‘VMM’), each VMM supporting execution of one or more VMs, the method comprising: assigning, by a VMM manager, the VMMs of the distributed computing environment to a logical tree topology, including assigning one of the VMMs as a root VMM of the tree topology; executing, amongst the VMMs of the tree topology, a gather operation, including: sending, by the root VMM, to other VMMs in the tree topology, a request to retrieve one or more VMs supported by the other VMMs, wherein the VMs requested to be retrieved are instances of an identical VM; pausing, by the other VMMs, each VM requested to be retrieved; and providing, by the other VMMs to the root VMM, the VMs requested to be retrieved and performing one of: executing by the root VMM, upon receipt, the provided VMs and not resuming execution of the provided VMs by the other VMMs, and storing by the root VMM, upon receipt of the provided VMs, the provided VMs without executing the provided VMs.