Patent ID: 8001581

Claim:
A method of operating an information handling system, comprising: providing an information handling system configured as a flexible computing node, said flexible computing node being coupled to a network and comprising an embedded service operating system (OS), embedded application operating system (OS), a local operating system (OS), and one or more processing devices configured to execute said embedded service operating system (OS), embedded application operating system (OS), and local operating system (OS); and using said one or more processing devices to execute the following steps: booting said embedded service OS on said flexible computing node without booting said local OS or said embedded application OS, then receiving user authentication credentials or user identification information in said embedded service OS from a user, then presenting received user authentication credentials or user authentication credentials determined based on received user identification information from said embedded service OS across said network to an authentication server, then using said embedded service OS to determine whether to boot said embedded application OS or to boot said local OS only upon successful authentication of said presented user authentication credentials by said authentication server of said presented user authentication credentials, and then booting either said embedded application OS or said local OS based on said determination made by said embedded service OS.