Patent ID: 7668938

Claim:
A system for repurposing a computing device, comprising: at least one computing device to be repurposed, the computing device comprising a server in a pool of servers of various server types, where the servers provide their respective statuses to a management controller device, the computing device having a computer readable storage medium comprising a default partition and a target partition different from the default partition, the default partition having a default operating system and application software, the computing device configured to be capable of booting from either the default partition or the target partition, where only one partition's operating system executes at a time, the default partition being configured to transfer system images via a network from a system image library to the target partition, the default partition also being configured to configure settings in a system image transferred from the system image library to the target image, the default operating system persisting despite the system image being copied to the target partition; the system image library including a plurality of different system images, each system image comprising a full bootable image of a pre-configured operating system and accompanying pre-configured application software, at least one of which is different, respectively, from the operating system and application software of the default partition, and the system image library being configured to transfer the system images via the network to computing devices being purposed; a management controller device, separate from the computing device and the other servers in the pool, receiving the statuses via the network and balancing the server types in the pool by using the statuses to determine that a particular server type is needed in the pool and selecting a system image from among system images in the image library based on the system image corresponding to the determined server type, and where the management controller device identifies the selected system image to the computing device and, via the network, cause the computing device to automatically: transfer the selected system image from the system image library to the target partition while booted from the default partition and running the default operating system, configure settings of the transferred system image on the target partition, and boot from the target partition after the system image is transferred to the target partition and configured, the management controller configured for access via the network, wherein the transferred image is a different image than the system image on the default partition.