1. A distributed computing data processing system configured for hypervisor selection for hosting a virtual machine (VM) image, the system comprising: a host server with at least one processor and memory and coupled to a plurality of hypervisors in nodes of a distributed computing data processing system; a repository of applications coupled to the host server; a broker coupled to the host server and configured to create and place different VM images into selected ones of the hypervisors; and, a hypervisor selection module executing in the memory of the host server, the module comprising program code enabled to determine characteristics of a selected application in the repository of applications, to identify a hypervisor amongst the hypervisors already hosting a VM image with an application having in common at least a portion of the determined characteristics, and to direct the broker to create and deploy a VM image with the selected application to the identified hypervisor.