Distributed application management consists of monitoring and controlling an application as it executes in a distributed environment. It encompasses such activities as configuration, initialization, performance monitoring, resource scheduling, and failure response. In this paper we describe the Meta system: a collection of tools for constructing distributed application management software. Meta provides the mechanism, while the programmer specifies the policy for application management. The policy is manifested as a control program which is a soft real-time reactive program. The underlying application is instrumented with a variety of built-in and user- defined sensors and actuators. These define the interface between the control program and the application. The control program also has access to a database describing the structure of the application and the characteristics of is environment. Some of the more difficult problems for application management occur when pre-existing, nondistributed programs are integrated into a distributed application for which they may not have been intended. Meta allows management functions to be retrofitted to such programs with a minimum effort. Keywords: Distributed application management, configuration management, distributed operating systems, dynamic reconfiguration, monitoring distributed systems, rule-based systems, Isis.