Patent ID: 8544007

Claim:
A method executed at least in part in a computing device for enterprise system imaging, the method comprising: receiving a developer created customized deployment job; and registering the customized deployment job, wherein the customized deployment job is registered as one of an image deployment job and an existing operating system deployment job; receiving an imaging job request; transferring the received imaging job request to a machine management service, wherein the machine management service manages a plurality of workflow hosts; requesting the imaging job from a workflow host, wherein the workflow host executes a workflow; creating the workflow comprising job steps based on a configuration context of the imaging job request; executing the workflow, wherein an image related to each job step is retrieved from a cache tree for each job step; if an image is created for a job step, updating the cache tree with the newly created image; if a customization task is performed as part of the imaging job, adding a result of the customization task to one of the cache tree as a new clone and a desktop cache as a differencing disk; extending the cache tree such that machines with similar imaging demand are supported without executing the customization task again; and notifying a client submitting the imaging job request through a callback.