an approach is provided in which a device is detected when it has been added to an operating system partition . the detecting occurs during a dynamic reconfiguration process , and the device is associated with a device type . a parent device is identified that corresponds to the added device . the identifying of the parent device is performed during the dynamic reconfiguration process and the identification of the parent device is based on the device type of the added device with the identified parent device corresponding to a parent device name . a unit address corresponding to the added device is retrieved and this retrieved unit address and the identified parent device name are passed to a configuration manager process . the added device is then configured based on the identified parent device name .