Live operating system update mechanisms

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• receive an update to an operating system;
• clone an original root volume group associated with an operating system instance executing in a first logical partition of the computing device to generate a cloned root volume group for booting a second logical partition of the computing device;
• mirror the original root volume group associated with the operating system instance executing in the first logical partition of the computing device to generate a mirrored root volume group in the first logical partition, wherein modifications to the original root volume group are mirrored to the mirrored root volume group;
• apply the update to the cloned root volume group to generate an updated and cloned root volume group;
• boot the second logical partition of the data processing system using the updated and cloned root volume group without shutting down and restarting the computing device;
• import the mirrored root volume group into the booted second logical partition;
• and
• migrate application instances to the second logical partition by restarting the application instances in the booted second logical partition using the mirrored root volume group.