1. A computer implemented method for using spare processing cores in a virtualized environment, the computer implemented method comprising: responsive to detecting that a workload partition needs to run on a virtual processor in the virtualized system, changing a state of the virtual processor to a wait state; determining a first node in the virtualized system comprising memory that is local to the workload partition; determining whether a non-spare processor core in the first node is available to run the workload partition; responsive to a determination that no non-spare processor core is available to run the workload partition, locating a free non-spare processor core in a second node; changing a state of the free non-spare processor core in the second node to an inactive state; changing a state of a spare processor core in the first node to an active state; and dispatching the workload partition to the spare processor core in the first node for execution.