Patent ID: 9152446
Filing Date: 2015-10-06
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A system, comprising: a computing device comprising a processor and a memory, a virtual machine (VM) host server resident on the memory and operating on the processor to host a number of VMs, the VM host server including at least one master VM having a base image stored on a non-transitory non-volatile computer-readable storage medium, the base image comprising an operating system; a Web server resident on the memory and operating on the processor to authenticate a user by use of a user authentication credential in response to a request for online access to a new VM on the VM host server; a cloning module resident on the memory and operating on the processor, in communication with the Web server and the VM host server, to automatically clone a master VM to create a VM clone for the user on the VM host server responsive to the request, wherein the VM clone comprises a copy of the base image on the non-transitory non-volatile computer-readable storage medium, wherein the cloning module is configured to create the VM clone by copying the base image and renaming the copied image according to unique information pertaining to the user, and wherein the cloning module is further configured to check resources of a plurality of virtual servers to select a virtual server with adequate resources to host the VM clone, to assign the VM clone to the selected virtual server, and to boot the VM clone using an auto-login sequence into an administrator account, wherein, in response to the user being authenticated, the cloning module is further configured to determine whether the user has an existing VM clone by checking for a VM clone uniquely named according to the unique identifier assigned to the user, and in response to the user having an existing VM clone, provide the user with online access to the existing VM clone; and wherein the Web server comprises a common graphical user interface configured to, based on the user authentication, provide access to the cloning module for creating the VM clone for the user and to provide access to the deployed VM clone of the user by use of the user authentication credential, wherein the user authentication credential used to provide access to the deployed VM clone corresponds to the user authentication credential used to authenticate the user to the Web server.