Patent ID: 8041987

Claim:
A method, comprising: a computer enabling a virtual client to transfer data between a storage network and the virtual client via a first physical host bus adapter (HBA), wherein the virtual client resides in a first logical partition (LPAR); the computer enabling a virtual I/O server to transfer data between the storage network and the virtual I/O server via a second physical HBA, wherein the virtual I/O server resides in a second LPAR; the computer enabling a virtual machine monitor to provide inter-partition communication between the first LPAR and the second LPAR, wherein the inter-partition communication enables virtualization functionality of the second physical HBA for the virtual client, and wherein the virtualization functionality is via remote direct memory access (RDMA) services of the virtual machine monitor; and the computer enabling, dynamically, the virtual client to transfer data between the storage network and the virtual client via the virtual I/O server and the second physical HBA.