Patent ID: 8671404

Claim:
A method comprising: provisioning, by a virtual manager server computing device, at least one physical machine to add the at least one physical machine to a collective server farm and to add software to enable the at least one physical machine to install virtual machines as directed by the virtual manager server computing device; receiving, by the virtual manager server computing device, a set of requirements for a virtual machine (VM) specified by a user of the VM; creating, by the virtual manager server computing device, a virtual profile associated with the VM and in view of the set of requirements provided by the user, wherein the virtual profile is maintained as a light-weight container and comprises an appliance metadata file section, a configuration management manifest section, a configuration management files section comprising files specified in the configuration manifest section, and an optional disk image section; and distributing, by the virtual manager server computing device, the light-weight container of the virtual profile to a target physical machine of the at least one physical machine in response to a request from the user, wherein the target physical machine deploys the VM on the target physical machine in view of the provisioning and the virtual profile without use of a binary image file for the VM.