1. A method of provisioning in a cloud compute environment having a set of cloud hosts, comprising: forming a distributed, cooperative cache throughout the set of cloud hosts; coordinating caching activity throughout the distributed, cooperative cache; and attempting to service requests to provision virtual resources from information stored in the distributed, cooperative cache; wherein the distributed, cooperative cache is formed by: declaring a portion of data store associated with a cloud host as a cache; storing template images and patches in the cache; and having each cache update at least one or more other caches with information about contents of its cache.