1. A system for configuring a process image in an automation network, the system comprising: a physical island having a network interface module, the physical island further including a plurality of input/output (I/O) modules, wherein configuration software run by the network interface module maintains a consistent process image for various distributed I/O configurations having one or more I/O modules of the plurality of I/O modules physically removed from the system using virtual placeholders, and wherein said configuration software generates a translation table that provides a correlation between node addresses of the physical island and node addresses of a logical island model of said physical island, wherein an I/O module of the plurality of I/O modules in a physical slot X having node ID X is presented outside the physical island as if that I/O module were located in slot Y.