Patent ID: 8572587

Claim:
A method comprising: initiating, by a provisioning server, provisioning a virtual image to a target machine, wherein the virtual image is a disk image of a software distribution; determining, by the provisioning server, a virtual image record associated with the virtual image, wherein the virtual image record is selected from a plurality of virtual image records associated with the virtual image, wherein each of the plurality of virtual image records comprises metadata that is different from other virtual image records associated with the virtual image, wherein the metadata of each virtual image record comprises a parameter for instantiating the virtual image; providing, by the provisioning server, the virtual image to the target machine; instantiating, by the provisioning server, the virtual image on the target machine based on the metadata of the virtual image record; and copying, by the provisioning server, the virtual image to a storage device of the target machine based on the metadata of the virtual image record.