Virtual machines can be deployed quickly and in a standardized fashion by using pre-built templates. Virtual machine templates are configured with minimum CPU, memory, and storage resources. The guest operating system and any prerequisite applications are installed in the template. Instead of taking hours (or even days, in some cases) to install the operating system and prepare the server, once a template has been created, a new virtual machine can be deployed within minutes. Virtual machine templates not only allow for quick deployment, but also help to maintain consistency across virtual machines that are deployed in the environment.