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Workload Partitions

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AIX Workload partitions (WPARs) are a software implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology introduced in the IBM's AIX 6.1 operating system that provides application environment isolation and resource control.

WPARs are software partitions that are created from, and share the resources of a single instance of the AIX OS. WPARs can be created on any system p hardware that supports AIX 6.1 or higher versions. There are two kinds of WPARs, System WPARs and Application WPARs.

System WPAR

System WPARS are virtual system environments that closely resembles a LPAR or a complete separate system. WPARs have their own private file systems, users and groups, login, network space, and administrative ___domain. All WPARs share the same global AIX kernel. There are two types of System WPARs :

Shared System WPAR

The /usr and /opt filesystems of this kind of WPAR is shared from that of the Global AIX OS. The Shared System WPAR however has to still maintain a private copy of /, /home, /var and /tmp.

Private System WPAR

The /usr and /opt filesystems of this kind of WPAR is separate from that of the Global AIX OS. The advantage of this kind of WPAR is that it can have applications installed, which are different from that of the Global AIX OS.

Application WPAR

Application WPARs are light weight environments used for isolating and executing a single application process.

Mobility

WPAR mobility is an extension to WPARs that provides the ability to move a running workload from one physical machine to another. Both System and Application WPARs can be moved from one machine to another. To continue having access to the same files before/after mobility; the filesystems of a mobile WPAR must either be stored in a disk or NFS mounted (both of which should be shared and accessible from all the machines where WPAR is being moved to). The feature can be extremely helpful in the following scenarios :

  • During hardware upgrades or other planned outages.
  • To transfer the load of the running application to another machine.

See also

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