Patent ID: 7584271

Claim:
A method, comprising: executing a plurality of boot applications on a plurality of processing complexes that share a PCI adapter via a PCI bus, wherein the plurality of processing complexes comprise a multi-cluster system; starting initial program loads on each of the plurality of processing complexes, in response to the executing of the plurality of boot applications; determining, by each of the plurality of boot applications, whether a defer configuration indicator included in the PCI adapter indicates that a configuration of the PCI adapter is to be delayed, wherein the defer configuration indicator is a single bit of data; and in response to determining that the defer configuration indicator included in the PCI adapter indicates that the configuration of the PCI adapter is to be delayed, performing: (i) completing, by the plurality of boot applications, the initial program loads of the plurality of processing complexes, wherein the initial program loads of the plurality of processing complexes includes loading operating systems and clustering applications on the plurality of processing complexes; (ii) determining, by the clustering applications, a processing complex from the plurality of processing complexes, wherein the determined processing complex is a single logical owner of the PCI adapter; (iii) configuring the PCI adapter by a clustering application on the single logical owner of the PCI adapter, wherein the PCI adapter is configured in response to completing the initial program loads of the plurality of processing complexes; and (iv) broadcasting, by the processing complex that is the single logical owner of the PCI adapter, a configuration information of the configured PCI adapter to other processing complexes of the plurality of processing complexes, in response to configuring the PCI adapter.