Patent ID: 7530071

Claim:
A method of facilitating access to input/output (I/O) resources of a partitioned environment comprising multiple logical partitions, said method comprising: providing an I/O logical partition in the partitioned environment, said I/O logical partition comprising one logical partition of the multiple logical partitions of the partitioned environment, the multiple logical partitions running above a hypervisor of the partitioned environment, and being interfaced via the hypervisor to one or more consumer logical partitions of the multiple logical partitions of the partitioned environment and providing access for the one or more consumer logical partitions to one or more I/O resources assigned to the logical I/O partition; employing, by at least one consumer logical partition of the one or more consumer logical partitions, the I/O logical partition to access at least one I/O resource of the one or more I/O resources assigned to the I/O logical partition; wherein the providing the I/O logical partition comprises using a partition management tool in providing the I/O logical partition; and wherein the partition management tool facilitates at least one of managing the I/O logical partition, specifying one or more resources to be allocated to the I/O logical partition, and specifying one or more consumer logical partitions allowed to share at least one I/O resource of the one or more I/O resources.