Patent ID: 8473460

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for replacing a partition unit, the method comprising: identifying a partition unit among a plurality of partition units assigned to a logical partition as a partition unit to be replaced; initializing a partition unit replacement (PUR) driver for use by a local operating system to replace the partition unit to be replaced with a replacement partition unit, the PUR driver providing a data conduit between the local operating system and global system hardware; employing the PUR driver to use the global system hardware to transfer data from the partition unit to be replaced to the replacement partition unit, the PUR driver comprising a memory transfer callback that, when called by the local operating system, instructs the transfer of the data by the global system hardware, the transfer of the data comprising an active migration, the active migration comprising: quiescing the local operating system by mitigating interrupts and memory modification; and transferring, with the global system hardware while the local operating system is quiesced, data from modified memory blocks in the partition unit to be replaced to the replacement partition unit; and remapping the replacement partition unit to respond to physical addresses from the local operating system in a substantially same way as the partition unit to be replaced previously responded.