1. A method, comprising: initializing multiple computing nodes to execute one or more software applications that provide a computing service, each of the computing nodes having a respective set of configuration data; wherein the configuration data includes provisioning characteristics for configuring each of the multiple computing nodes to execute as a software defined computing cluster, the configuration data including configuration information for a cache and a cluster interface of each of the multiple computing nodes; at a first time, deploying the multiple computing nodes as the software defined computing cluster; at a second time subsequent to the first time, automatically and without user intervention, initializing, using a given set of configuration data based on each respective set of configuration data of the computing nodes of the software defined computing cluster, an additional computing node; and adding the additional computing node to the software defined computing cluster thereby automatically provisioning the additional computing node to the software defined computing cluster.