Patent ID: 8065676

Claim:
A method of automated provisioning of computing resources for shared services in a resource-on-demand system, the method comprising: receiving at least one policy associated with virtual machines needed to satisfy a computing demand for the shared services; determining from the at least one policy a number of virtual machines needed for a virtual machine production pool for a period of time to satisfy the computing demand for the shared services; determining from the at least one policy a number of unassigned virtual machines needed for a virtual machine buffer pool; and automatically provisioning servers and virtual machines for the virtual machine production pool and the virtual machine buffer pool based on the determined number of virtual machines needed for the virtual machine production pool, the determined number of unassigned virtual machines needed for the virtual machine buffer pool, and a changing computing demand of the shared services during the period of time, wherein the shared services comprise a virtual desktop system comprised of a plurality of desktop classes and each of the virtual machines provides a desktop in one of the classes, and wherein automatically provisioning servers and virtual machines comprises: copying a seed image for each class of desktop needed for at least one of the virtual machine production pool and the virtual machine buffer pool to a virtual machine creation pool; making copies of each seed image at the virtual machine creation pool based on the number of desktops needed for each class of desktop; and distributing the copies from the virtual machine creation pool to at least one of the virtual machine production pool and the virtual machine buffer pool.