Mechanisms are provided for performing a live update of an operating system. The mechanisms receive an update to an operating system and clone a root volume group associated with an operating system instance executing in a first logical partition of the data processing system to generate a cloned root volume group. The mechanisms apply the update to the cloned root volume group to generate an updated and cloned root volume group and boot a second logical partition of the data processing system using the updated and cloned root volume group. Moreover, the mechanisms migrate application instances and application data to the second logical partition.