Patent ID: 8432793

Claim:
A computer program product for managing recovery of a communications link in a multi-tasking multi-processor environment, the computer program product comprising: a tangible non-transitory storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit for performing a method comprising: shutting off timers for a failed channel associated with the communications link, the failed channel being associated with a physical link; storing a loss of link condition in a data structure; disabling communications on the failed channel; establishing a queue pair out-of-band connection in a channel that is multiplexed across the physical link; sending an external notification, via the queue pair out-of-band connection, of the loss of link condition; resuming, via the queue pair out-of-band connection, data communications on the failed channel, by rebuilding and connecting the failed channel in firmware across the physical link, thereby leaving the physical link intact; and handling channel path management via the queue pair, wherein the channel path management comprises a connection establishment with a remote system, heartbeat, and an invalidation of requests and other recovery actions.