Booting a Physical Device Using Custom-Created Frozen Partially-Booted Virtual Machines

A method, comprising:

• operating a packet switching device including a plurality of processing elements distributed within the packet switching device including on each of a plurality of line cards and a route processor, with each of a plurality of processing elements of the packet switching device operating according to a corresponding current virtual machine;
• producing a corresponding partially-booted virtual image for each of said one or more processing elements according to configuration information specific to the packet switching device, and freezing each of said one or more of corresponding partially-booted virtual machines;
• and
• rebooting said operating packet switching device using said one or more of corresponding partially-booted virtual machines to a fully operational packet switching device including each of said one or more processing elements running from an unfrozen said corresponding partially-booted virtual machine.

A packet switching device, comprising:

• a packet switching mechanism configured to packet switch packets within the packet switching device;
• a route processor including at least one processing element;
• and
• a plurality of line cards, each including interfaces configured to send and receive packets and at least one processing element, with each of the plurality of line cards and the route processor configured to communicate packets among themselves via the packet switching mechanism;
• wherein each of said processing elements are configured to reboot from operating according to a corresponding current virtual machine, including ceasing operation of said current virtual machines then unfreezing corresponding frozen device-specific partially-booted virtual machines produced by the packet switching device while the packet switching device was prior operating according to different virtual machines, then continuing with device-specific dynamic booting of the packet switching device.