Patent ID: 8713135

Claim:
A system for managing device images comprising: a memory component for storing a set of one or more device images, wherein each device image in the set of one or more device images comprises at least a preconfigured device operating system; and a device image manager in communication with the memory component and operable to: cause the execution of a device configuration process on a physical computing device, wherein the device configuration process is associated with device provisioning preferences, and wherein the device provisioning preferences comprise at least criteria for obtaining device configuration information from a physical computing device; as a result of the execution of the device configuration process, obtain device configuration information corresponding to the physical computing device based on the device provisioning preferences, wherein the device configuration information includes at least one of a device hardware profile, a device network profile, a device benchmark profile, and a device physical location profile; select a subset of device images from the set of one or more device images based on the device configuration information; obtain device image selection criteria from a user; select a device image from the subset of device images based on the device image selection criteria; provide the selected device image to the physical computing device; and cause the physical computing device to load the selected device image.