Patent ID: 8677352

Claim:
A method of operating a computer system, the method comprising: selecting a first operating system image from amongst plural operating system images accessible to a hardware machine, wherein the first operating system image is stored in a first storage partition; booting the hardware machine using the first operating system image and executing code thereof as a host operating system; providing a virtualization environment and instantiating therein a virtual machine using first virtual machine configuration data descriptive of the first virtual machine, wherein the first virtual machine configuration data is stored in a second storage partition separately from the first operating system image; and loading, as a guest operating system executing within the virtual machine, a second operating system image selected from amongst the plural operating system images, and executing code thereof in connection with the instantiated virtual machine, wherein the second operating system image is stored in a third storage partition, wherein the first operating system image was previously loaded as a guest operating system instance and second virtual machine configuration data for a second virtual machine in which the first operating system image was previously loaded as the guest operating system instance is stored in a fourth storage partition separate from the first storage partition, and wherein the fourth storage partition storing the second virtual machine configuration data associated with execution of the guest operating system instance in the second virtual machine while the first operating system image was previously loaded as the guest operating system instance is isolated from the first operating system image used to boot the hardware machine.