Patent ID: 7788363

Claim:
A method of communicating intelligent platform management interface data within a mainframe computing system, the method comprising: forming a plurality of partitions within the mainframe computing system, wherein each partition is a logical association of one or more of a plurality of independent computing cells of the mainframe computing system communicatively coupled together by a network interconnect to define a single execution environment that includes the one or more logically associated cells, determining within each one of the plurality of partitions an associated partition identifier that uniquely identifies each of the plurality of partitions within the mainframe computing system; executing a virtual intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) protocol to define and configure a respective logical intelligent platform management bus (IPMB) for each of the partitions, each of the IPMBs to logically interconnect each of the one or more plurality of cells included within the same one of the plurality of partitions, wherein configuring the logical IPMB within each of the plurality of partitions comprises assigning each of the logical IPMBs an associated bus number equal to the partition identifier associated with the partition in which the logical IPMB resides, wherein the bus number uniquely identifies each of the logical IPMBs within the mainframe computing system, and wherein each of the logical IPMBs are defined for communication of IPMB messages over the network interconnect; and securely communicating the IPMI messages between each of the one or more cells of each partition via the respective logical IPMB of each partition.