Embodiments include an infrastructure shared among cloud services that supports fast provisioning of virtual machines (VMs). A set of powered-on parent VM templates and a set of powered-off child VMs are maintained by the infrastructure in a hierarchy. The child VMs are instantiated from the parent VM templates, and pre-registered to a cloud operating system in some embodiments. In response to requests from the cloud services for the child VMs, where the requests specify child VM configurations, child VMs from the set of powered-off child VMs are selected and customized based on the child VM configurations, and then deployed for use by the cloud services. In some embodiments, the fast provisioning of VMs is supported by forking operations in the infrastructure.