An apparatus and method provide a protocol for communicating between an operating system that owns a shared resource and other operating systems that use the shared resource so that the operating systems that use the shared resource will not crash if the operating system that owns the shared resource is restarted. Messages are defined that allow handshaking between operating systems so that operating systems that share a resource will realize the resource will be unavailable for some period of time, and that allow resuming the sharing of the resource once the operating system that owns the shared resource is restarted.