Facilitating access to input/output resources via an I/O partition shared by multiple consumer partitions

The method of claim 21, wherein the automatically restarting is performed by a hypervisor of the partitioned environment coupled to the I/O partition and the one or more consumer partitions, the hypervisor using a heartbeat signal to detect that the I/O partition is to be restarted.

A system of facilitating access to input/output (I/O) resources of a partitioned environment, said system comprising:

• means for providing an I/O partition in the partitioned environment, said I/O partition being coupled to one or more consumer partitions of the partitioned environment and providing access to one or more I/O resources coupled to the I/O partition;
• and
• means for employing, by at least one consumer partition of the one or more consumer partitions, the I/O partition to access at least one I/O resource of the one or more I/O resources.

A partitioned environment comprising:

• a consumer partition;
• and
• an input/output (I/O) partition coupled to the consumer partition, said I/O partition providing the consumer partition with access to one or more I/O resources owned by the I/O partition.