Patent ID: 8862741

Claim:
A system, comprising: one or more memory units; and one or more processing units operable to: access user selection data comprising a plurality of selections associated with a plurality of pre-approved machine image layers for instantiating machine images over a communication network, the user selection data comprising: a selection of a first machine image layer from a first group of the plurality of pre-approved machine image layers; and a selection of a second machine image layer from a second group of the plurality of pre-approved machine image layers that is based at least in part on the selection of the first machine image layer and presented to a user after the selection of the first machine image layer; determine, based at least in part on the user selection data, two or more machine image layers from a plurality of available machine image layers to instantiate on a particular computing system resource; determine that the first machine image layer of the determined two or more machine image layers is not cached locally on one or more memory devices of the particular computing system resource, and in response: accessing a stored copy of the first machine image layer, the stored copy of the first machine image layer residing in memory external to the particular computing system resource; and caching the stored copy of the first machine image layer on the one or more memory devices of the particular computing system resource; determine that the second machine image layer of the determined two or more machine image layers is cached locally on the one or more memory devices of the particular computing system resource; and instantiate a virtual machine on the particular computing system resource using at least a combination of the determined first and second machine image layers.