US Patent 7765379 Parallel installation of logical partitions

An apparatus and method provide parallel installation of logical partitions on a computer system. The function of a hardware maintenance console is built into a logical partition configuration mechanism that resides in the system firmware. A virtual local area network (VLAN) is used by the logical partition configuration mechanism to define an I/O bridge that allows installing multiple logical partitions in parallel. Because multiple logical partitions may be installed in parallel, the time required to install logical partitions is greatly reduced.