allocation memory partitioning firewall management etc in an embodiment illustrated in fig2 to enable template like representation of a hypervisor 201 a description of the model hypervisor 201 is created that represents the complete configuration of a host at a virtualization software level this description can be used as the basis from which to configure other hypervisors 201 more specifically a hypervisor profile 203 is generated from an existing hypervisor 201 configuration by mapping each individual configuration setting to a hypervisor profile configuration policy a set of applicable and valid policies for a hypervisor profile 203 indicate what options and parameters are to be specified and what values are valid in other words the specific contents of a hypervisor profile 203 is automatically kept within the boundaries specified by the set of applicable and valid policies a hypervisor profile 203 can be thought of as a collection of policies a policy driven approach allows flexibility and extensibility in how hypervisor 201 configurations can be managed a variety of configuration policies can be used to define a hypervisor profile 203 for example deferred configuration policies allow the setting of values to be deferred until the time an actual hypervisor 201 is configured based on the profile 203 for example a profile 203 could specify to use two nics or two nics that fall within a given bandwidth criteria the specific two nics.