A method, computer program product, and computer system to maintain high availability of a service processor. An embodiment provides program code with a location of a second service processor (the second service processor is communicatively coupled to the first service processor). The program code stops a virtual machine during runtime, including instruction execution and IO operations, where during runtime, the virtual machine executes one or more processes to service and manage computing resources in the distributed computing environment. The program code generates a micro-checkpoint of the virtual machine. The program code resumes the instruction execution of the virtual machine and transmits the micro-checkpoint to a second service processor based on the location and then resumes IO operations. The second service processor utilizes the micro-checkpoint to enable a hypervisor on the second service processor to start a virtual machine on the second service processor.