Patent ID: 7546398

Claim:
A method for accessing a plurality of input/output (I/O) devices physically distributed across a plurality of logical partitions (LPARs) without a single point of failure comprising: creating a distributed virtual input/out (VIO) server by running a VIO tool on each LPAR of the plurality of LPARs; wherein each LPAR is operable to access the plurality of I/O devices using inter-partition communication and each LPAR is operable to access an I/O device to which it is directly connected; wherein each LPAR is mapped to a dedicated I/O device that is not shared with the plurality of LPARs; wherein each VIO tool performs steps comprising: receiving an I/O request from an application by a VIO tool; assigning the I/O request to one of the plurality of I/O devices, wherein the I/O request is assigned to any I/O device of a proper type attached to any LPAR, regardless of which LPAR runs the application; wherein types of I/O devices comprise Ethernet adaptors, disk adaptors, fibre channels and persistent storage media; accessing an I/O Device Mapping List, that maps applications and LPARs to the plurality of I/O devices using bindings; consulting an Autonomic Manager to assign the I/O request to a preferred I/O device, wherein the preferred I/O device is one performing at an acceptable level; sending the I/O request to the assigned I/O device; binding the I/O request to the assigned I/O device wherein an assignment of the assigned I/O device is encapsulated in one or more subsequent requests of a client/server session; saving the assignment to the I/O Device Mapping List; responsive to a failure of a previously assigned I/O device or to a failure of the LPAR mapped to the I/O device, reassigning one or more subsequent I/O requests in the client/server session to another I/O device; and saving the reassigned I/O request to the I/O Device Mapping List; wherein a plurality of input/output (I/O) devices physically distributed across a plurality of logical partitions (LPARs) are accessible without a single point of failure.