Patent ID: 7694298

Claim:
A method comprising: using a first virtual machine (VM) in a processing system to emulate a first server blade; using a second VM in the processing system to emulate a second server blade; and using a virtual machine monitor (VMM) in the processing system to provide a communication channel to at least one of the emulated server blades to emulate an out-of-band communication channel for at least one of the emulated server blades; using the VMM to emulate a baseboard management controller (BMC) for at least one of the emulated server blades; receiving status data from one of the emulated BMCs via the emulated out-of-band communication channel, wherein the status data pertains to an operational status of the emulated server blade associated with the emulated BMC; sending the status data from the VMM to server blade management software, wherein the server blade management software includes control logic to allow workload to be reallocated among physical server blades, but the server blade management software lacks support for reallocating workload among virtual server blades; receiving, from the server blade management software, a packet requesting reallocation of workload from the first emulated server blade to the second emulated server blade; and in response to receiving the packet, using the emulated BMCs of the first and second emulated server blades to reallocated workload from the first VM to the second VM.