1. A method comprising: receiving, at a data processing device, a status of a resource of a distributed system; when the status of the resource indicates a resource failure, executing instructions on the data processing device to determine whether the resource failure is correlated to any other resource failures within the distributed system based on a system hierarchy of the distributed system, the system hierarchy comprising system domains, each system domain having an active state or an inactive state, the resource belonging to at least one system domain, wherein the resource failure is correlated to other resource failures when a statistically significant number of resources having failures reside in a same system domain; when the resource failure is correlated to other resource failures within the distributed system, delaying execution on the data processing device of a remedial action associated with the resource; and when the resource failure is uncorrelated to other resource failures within the distributed system, initiating execution on the data processing device of the remedial action associated with the resource.