Patent ID: 7174550

Claim:
A method of enhancing input/output processing of a computing environment, said method comprising: configuring a channel subsystem component of the computing environment as a plurality of channel subsystems, said plurality of channel subsystems comprsing at least a first channel subsystem explicitly identified by a first channel subsystem identifier and a second channel subsystem explicitly identified by a second channel subsystem identifier; employing, by a hypervisor of the computing environment, the first channel subsystem identifier in assigning the first channel subsystem of the channel subsystem component to a logical partition of a central processing complex of the computing environment, the first channel subsystem appearing to the logical partition as a complete channel subsystem and comprising a first plurality of channel paths configured to a first plurality of physical channels to access a first set of one or more input/output devices of the computing environment, said first set of one or more input/output devices being represented by a first set of one or more subchannels of the first channel subsystem that specify one or more first channel paths of the first plurality of channel paths to be used to access the first set of one or more input/output devices; employing, by the hypervisor, the second channel subsystem identifier in assigning the second channel subsystem of the chammel subsystem component to another logical partition of the central processing complex, the second channel subsystem appearing to the another logical partition as a complete channel subsystem and comprising a second plurality of channel paths configured to a second plurality of physical channels to access a second set of one or more input/output devices of the computing environment, said second set of one or more input/output devices being represented by a second set of one or more subchannels of the second channel subsystem that specify one or more second channel paths of the second plurality of channel paths to be used to access the second set of one or more input/output devices; assigning a physical channel of the computing environment to the first channel subsystem; and assigning the physical channel to the second channel subsystem, wherein the first channel subsystem and the second channel subsystem concurrently share the assigned physical channel.