1. A method comprising: receiving, by one or more computing devices, a request to bring a first resource object of a plurality of resource objects online, each resource object corresponding to a resource on a server in a server cluster; analyzing, by the one or more computing devices, a dependency filter object, the dependency filter object being an expression specifying dependencies of the first resource object on at least three other resource objects of the plurality of resource objects, two of the three other resource objects being specified as alternatives of each other; and processing, by the one or more computing devices, the request to bring the first resource object online in accordance with the analysis of the dependency filter object.