Embodiments of the present invention provide a flexible approach to construct/create instances of cloud computing environments. Specifically, under embodiments of the present invention, an image of a virtual machine instance is created from the following components: image bits; content such as the liner notes, manual, metadata, etc.; end user information (so that the image can be customized for one or more specific end users); values provided to an installer; and cloud based values (e.g., IP address, hostname, etc.). By constructing the virtual machine using this approach, dynamic aspects of the image are managed external to the static binary representation of the image. This would include artifacts such as documentation, install scripts, binary files, etc. Additionally, user supplied data can be captured dynamically and copied to customize the image at the time of instance creation. Still yet, embodiments of the present invention provides system level configuration to construct the virtual machine.