Patent ID: 8131891

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: (A) at least one processor; (B) a memory coupled to the at least one processor; (C) first and second logical partitions defined on the apparatus, the first logical partition executing a first operating system and controlling a plurality of shared I/O adapters allocated to the first logical partition by a partition manager, the first logical partition executing first software, and the second logical partition executing a second operating system and using at least one of the plurality of shared I/O adapters allocated to and controlled by the first logical partition by communicating with the partition manager that controls the first and second logical partitions; and (D) a hosting partition update mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor, the hosting partition update mechanism updating a third logical partition by installing an update of the first software in the third logical partition and executing the updated first software in the third logical partition, the hosting partition update mechanism migrating less than all of the plurality of shared I/O adapters from the first logical partition to the third logical partition, and testing the migrated shared I/O adapters before migrating other of the plurality of shared I/O adapters to the third logical partition.