Patent ID: 8195867

Claim:
A method of controlling partition shut-down within a shared memory partition data processing system, the method comprising: responsive to a shut-down initiating event within a shared memory partition data processing system comprising at least one shared memory partition, a paging service partition, and a hypervisor, notifying, by the hypervisor, the paging service partition to shut down, wherein the shared memory partition data processing system further comprises a shared memory pool of physical memory, the hypervisor managing access to logical memory pages within the shared memory pool by managing page mappings of logical memory pages to physical memory of the shared memory pool for the at least one shared memory partition, and transparently managing page-out of logical memory pages assigned to the at least one shared memory partition from the shared memory pool to one or more external paging devices via the paging service partition, and wherein a respective paging service stream exists between the paging service partition and the hypervisor for each shared memory partition of the at least one shared memory partition, each paging service stream including a stream state; and responsive to the notifying, determining whether a shared memory partition of the at least one shared memory partition is active, and if yes, signaling, by the paging service partition, the hypervisor to complete paging activity for each shared memory partition that is active, and waiting for the stream state associated with each active shared memory partition to enter one of a suspended state or a completed state before automatically shutting down the paging service partition.