In one embodiment, a system for managing a virtualization environment includes a set of host machines, each of which includes a hypervisor, virtual machines, and a virtual machine controller, one or more virtual disks comprising a plurality of storage devices, the one or more virtual disks being accessible by the virtual machine controllers, where the virtual machine controllers conduct I/O transactions with the virtual disks, and a deployment system configured to receive a request to deploy a virtualized file server on a plurality of host machines, where the request is associated with deployment parameters, select a deployment image for the host machines based on the deployment parameters, and provide the deployment image to each host machine via the virtual disk. The virtual machine controller located on the host machine stores at least a portion of the deployment image on a storage device associated with the host machine.