Patent ID: 8392378

Claim:
A data processing system comprising: one or more processors; one or more memories coupled to the one or more processors; at least one input/output (I/O) adapter that enables connection to an external network with a shared storage repository; and a virtualization management component executing within the data processing system to generate a plurality of operating system (OS) partitions including a first virtual I/O server (VIOS) partition, which performs the functions of: performing, via a backup/restore utility of a cluster aware operating system (CA OS) executing on a processor resource of the first VIOS partition, a cluster level backup operation from one or more VIOS partitions, including the first VIOS partition and one or more second VIOS partitions, wherein the cluster level backup operation creates a VIOS cluster configuration backup file having configuration information about hardware, logical and virtual devices of each VIOS partition within a VIOS cluster and all cluster data from a shared VIOS database of the VIOS cluster, wherein performing the cluster level backup operation from the first VIOS partition includes a first VIOS cluster performing a local configuration backup of configuration data of the first VIOS partition to generate a first XML configuration file; forwarding the first XML configuration file to a collating storage location; messaging each second VIOS partition within the VIOS cluster to perform a location configuration backup and to return a respective second XML configuration file to a single collating storage location; performing a complete backup of the shared VIOS database to generate a VIOS database backup file; forwarding the VIOS database backup file to the collating storage location; generating a single VIOS cluster configuration backup file from plurality Extensible Markup Language (XML) configuration files of each VIOS partition within the VIOS cluster and the one (1) VIOS database backup file, wherein the generating comprises performing a zip operation to collate and compress the plurality XML configuration files and the VIOS database backup file into a single zip file; and storing the single zip file as the VIOS cluster configuration backup file; storing the VIOS cluster configuration backup file within a storage location; and responsive to receipt of a VIOS restore command at the first VIOS partition: retrieving the configuration backup file from the storage location; restoring a configuration of the hardware, logical and virtual devices of the first VIOS partition to a state that existed at a time at which the backup operation creating the VIOS cluster configuration backup file was performed; triggering a restore operation of each second VIOS partition within the VIOS cluster; and restoring the shared VIOS database with the cluster data from the VIOS cluster configuration backup file.