Live Logical Partition Migration with Stateful Offload Connections Using Context Extraction and Insertion

A method comprising:

• receiving a message to migrate a virtual machine executing on a first system to a second system, wherein the first system includes a first network adapter used to send data packets over a computer network;
• extracting hardware state data stored in a native format in a first memory area of the first network adapter, wherein the hardware state data is used to process the data packets generated by the virtual machine;
• storing the extracted hardware state data in a first shared memory area in the first system at a memory block starting address;
• establishing a connection between a first hypervisor included in the first system and a second hypervisor included in the second system;
• migrating the virtual machine to the second system using the established connection, wherein the migrating includes copying the hardware state data from the first shared memory area to a second shared memory area located on the second system;
• retrieving the hardware state data from the second shared memory area at the memory block starting address;
• and
• configuring a second network adapter included on the second system, wherein the configuration includes writing the retrieved hardware state data to a second memory included on the second network adapter.