APPLYING FIRMWARE UPDATES IN A SYSTEM WITH ZERO DOWNTIME BY SELECTIVELY OFFLINING AND ONLINING HARDWARE USING A SCALE-UP HYPERVISOR LAYER

A method includes running a scale-up hypervisor on a server complex including at least one server and running a single operating system and at least one application on top of the scale-up hypervisor. The method further includes identifying a firmware update available for a first hardware component within the server complex. The scale-up hypervisor removes all workload from the first hardware component, and the identified firmware update is applied to the first hardware component while the first hardware component is idle and the hypervisor continues running the single operating system and the at least one application. Preferably, the method may be used to sequentially apply firmware updates to various hardware components across the plurality of servers without ever shutting down the entire plurality of servers.