Patent ID: 8086906

Claim:
A method for correlating a device's identity between a global management entity and a local operating system running on a partition of a partitionable computing device, the partition being identified by a partition identifier, the method comprising: (a) in response to the local operating system detecting a faulting device, the local operating system: (i) generating a fault message including a local identifier of the faulting device; and (ii) transmitting the fault message to the global management entity; (b) in response to receiving the fault message, the global management entity: (i) determining a global identifier, different from the local identifier, of the faulting device using information contained in the fault message, wherein the global identifier comprises a combination of the local identifier and the partition identifier; (ii) selecting an appropriate replacement device based at least in part on the global identifier of the faulting device, the global identifier being configured to be used to locate information about the faulting device in a table, the information being used to search the table for the appropriate replacement device; (iii) changing a routing table to map the replacement device to the faulting device; and (iv) transmitting to the local operating system a global identifier of the replacement device; and (c) in response to the local operating system receiving the global identifier of the replacement device, the local operating system mapping the global identifier of the replacement device to a local identifier of the replacement device different from the global identifier of the replacement device.