Patent ID: 8812687

Claim:
A method for managing a cloud computing system, the method comprising: instantiating one or more remote desktop configurations that makes available, to a plurality of users via a remote network connection, remote desktop configurations comprising an operating environment and software applications to be included in the operating environment; receiving, by a computing device, a first request for a first remote desktop session from one of the plurality of users, the first remote desktop session conforming to one of the one or more remote desktop configurations; in response to the first request, assigning, by the computing device, a first virtual machine endpoint to the requested first remote desktop session from a pool of available virtual machine endpoints, wherein the request may be associated with any one of the available virtual machine endpoints in the pool, and instantiating the requested first remote desktop session when previously saved user state information is not available, and otherwise loading previously saved user state data associated with the one of the plurality of users and included in a virtual profile implemented as virtual hard disk associated with the one of the plurality of users, the previously saved user state data comprising the user's preference and personal data, wherein the previously saved user state is saved independently of the requested first remote desktop session and the assigned first virtual machine endpoint; updating, by the computing device, the saved state information during the first remote desktop session; and in response to a second request for a second remote desktop session, assigning, by the computing device, a second virtual machine endpoint to the requested second remote desktop session from the pool of available virtual machine endpoints, wherein the second request may be associated with any one of the available virtual machine endpoints in the pool, and loading the saved state information that was updated during the first remote desktop session, wherein the first and second virtual machine endpoints are different.