Patent ID: 8458700

Claim:
A method for initializing a virtual machine on a target host according to virtual machine characteristics, comprising: receiving a request for a provisioning job, the request comprising a virtual machine designation that identifies a virtual machine and a target host designation that identifies a target host out of a plurality of hosts as corresponding to a host within which the virtual machine is to be initialized according to virtual machine characteristics; retrieving the virtual machine characteristics for the virtual machine based upon the request; querying a provisioning application lookup structure to identify an entry comprising a mapping of the target host to a provisioning virtual application comprised within the target host, the provisioning application lookup structure comprising one or more entries mapping respective hosts within the plurality of hosts to one or more provisioning virtual applications; and sending the provisioning job to the provisioning virtual application comprised within the target host, the provisioning job instructing the provisioning virtual application to initialize the virtual machine on the target host using the virtual machine characteristics.