Generally described, aspects of the present disclosure relate to loading an updated virtual machine monitor on the physical computing device during a boot process. The updated virtual machine monitor may be loaded from an update manager external to the virtual machine monitor, such as the offload device or a server connected with the physical computing device over a network. In certain embodiments, the updated virtual machine monitor may be loaded in a tiered process by first loading a startup virtual machine monitor, which automatically updates by loading the updated virtual machine monitor. The startup virtual machine monitor may be a virtual machine monitor with less functionality than the updated machine manager, such as where the startup virtual machine monitor may be a “lite” or simple virtual machine monitor while the updated virtual machine monitor may be a fully functional virtual machine monitor of the most recent update or version.