Patent ID: 7702777

Claim:
A method for centralized software maintenance of user disk images stored on a blade computing system comprising blades configured to run the user disk images, the method comprising: creating a maintenance image, including: identifying and installing one or more of a virus scan program, a patch install program, a software upgrade program, a defragmentation program, and a backup program to be run from the maintenance image and identifying the user disk images to be maintained by the maintenance image; storing the maintenance image on a storage blade or at another centralized memory location; monitoring the blades configured to run the user disk images until one or more inactive blades are identified; designating one of the inactive blades as an administrative blade; monitoring the user disk images until one or more inactive user disk images are identified; providing location information for the one or more inactive user disk images to the administrative blade; and activating the administrative blade and running the maintenance image on said administrative blade to perform one or more of a virus scan, a patch install, a software upgrade, defragmentation, and a data backup on the one or more inactive user disk images.