How isolated are AIX WPARs?

UNIX AIX
1

Hello All,

We are setting up an IBM P710 Express server for our QA testing internal customer. We are planning to setup 2 WPARs on this base server. The only thing we do not know is: "Would the compilers on the two WPARs conflict?"

This might have sounded like a naive question but these were the exact words of my Manager. I assume WPARs are roughly analogous to Solaris Zones but I am not sure how isolated WPARs are on the base machine.

I am a newbie to AIX though I had been into Linux/Solaris for the past 5 years.

2

For a start have a look at this post:

Are you sure you are dealing with WPAR and not LPAR?

3

Hi,

WPAR is the equivalent of a solaris zone, whereas the LPAR is effectively the equivalent of a Solaris Domain.

Regards

Dave

4

I am not that knowledgeable about Solaris, but i would describe WPARs as chroot -ed environments with some logic on top to make them better manageable.

My professional experience is to better stay clear from WPARs and use LPARs instead. It is a lot easier to manage and you forego a lot of dependencies WPARs would introduce into your work. The only setback with LPARs (they need a small amount of resources more than WPARs) is alleviated tenfolds by their better manageability.

Btw: all modern LPARs are DLPARs, if you do not undertake extra measures to make them not dynamically.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

5

We have been setting up LPARs, in fact DLPARs, managed from HMC for our internal users. But on this particluar server, the physical configuration is too low to setup working DLPARs (The user had them procured without consulting us). So, we are setting up 2 WPARs on it.

I am assuming chroot from base server does not cause the compiler of one machine to affect the one on the other. Just like in Solaris Zones.

So, in any situation, would there be any compiler conflict between two WPARs running on the same base server?

6

I see. You have my pity.

No, i don't think so. In fact, if i were you, i would be more concerned about license issues than about software conflicts. Many software vendors do not accomodate well to virtualisation issues and most of them try to get you license the whole (physical) machine when you use the software in one partition (this is what most issues boil down to).

We had such an issue only recently with SAP and IBM (we use DB/2 under SAP) and ended up having to set up IBMs ITLM on one of our systems. Believe me, you don't want that. ;-))

I hope this helps.

bakunin