IBM workload partitions Manager and live application mobility applications in Aix

Introduction to WPAR and workload partitions Manager

Workload partitioning workload partitions or WPAR is a software-based virtualization solution provided by IBM Aix, simply by creating multiple independent AIX system environments in a physical host or logical partition on AIX version 6 or above, where customers can Applications such as Web, Email, databases, and so on, run on each of the simulated AIX and are unaffected by each other.

In contrast to LPAR technologies that divide physical machines into multiple virtual partitions in order to fully utilize machine resources, Wpars can provide virtual environments in a short period of time and obviate the task of maintaining multiple system mirrors, such as upgrading, backup/restore, and working in a host global environment (global Environment).

IBM PowerVM Workload Partition Manager for AIX or referred to as Wpar Manager is a plug-in developed by IBM in Systems Director (SD) to centralize management of Wpars, which Line above SD and graphically provide WPAR lifecycle control management, including Wpar automatic discovery, creation, modification, deletion, migration, etc. The Systems Director management interface enables users to intuitively understand the resource usage and performance metrics of the workload partition. A 90-day trial version of the media is currently available in the IBM AIX 7.1 Enterprise package for trial use by customers.

Principles and characteristics of Live application mobility (LAM)

Figure 1. Workload Partition Migration

The similarities and differences between LAM and LPM

Dynamic partition migration (live Partition mobility) is a feature of PowerVM virtualization based on POWER6 hardware that can transfer an LPAR in a running state (or a stopped state) from one physical machine to another, and the process for a user is transparent and does not require interruption of applications residing on the LPAR. While workload partition migration (LAM) is a pure AIX feature, it does not require any zoning configuration changes and can be performed in any server that is running AIX version 6 (including servers based on POWER4). LAM is a virtualization feature of AIX version 6 that can run on all systems that support AIX version 6, however, dynamic partitioning migration is an advanced PowerVM virtualization feature that works only with the system P servers that are based on POWER6 All operating systems, including AIX and power Linux. Workload partition migrations do not need to be configured with virtual devices in both the source and target systems, as is the case with dynamic partitioning migrations, and AIX remains running on both systems and continues to use the resources assigned to it.

LAM and PowerHA

Workload partition migration improves application availability, but it is not a highly available solution. Its host global environment and load partition may have a single point of failure, such as a file system that uses NFS as a workload partition. In addition, it does not monitor the state of the application, and accidental termination of the application does not automatically trigger the migration. For unexpected outages, specific operations are still required, which are typically performed through a cluster solution such as IBM HACMP. But LAM does not like PowerHA migrate code for the application does not require. Cluster software PowerHA and workload partitioning migrations provide different capabilities that can be combined to increase application availability and uptime. They can simplify management and thus reduce the costs associated with them.

LAM's basic requirements for source/target system hardware and software

Similar hardware, such as processor type

Same file system type, same network segment IP

Same AIX system version and patch level

The file set Mcr.rte version of the target system must be the same or higher than the version of the source system

The storage key number of the target system must be the same as or more than the source system

Devices that are output to the load partition must be available on the source and target systems and not be exported to other load partitions on the target system

Some related properties of the WPAR involving LAM
Checkpointable Property

A prerequisite for the migration of a workload partition is the Checkpoint property of the partition, which typically specifies the-c parameter by creating a application or System type load partition

Application type partition Wparexec-c [...]
System type partition mkwpar-c [...]

View current Partition Modification properties
Listing 1

# Lswpar-g | grep checkpointable
Checkpointable:yes

Modify an existing workload partition This property requires the partition to be stopped, and the writable file system for the partition must not be local, so only the changes to the current system type workload partition are supported

Listing 2

#chwpar –c System_wpar

The file system organization of Wpars and detached ROOTVG wpars

A load partition for migration purposes, the private file system must be located on a separate external store that is accessible to both the source node and the target node. It can be implemented in several ways, such as NFS, VSCSI disk, SAN disk. GPFS file systems and clusters are not recommended for workload partitions.

The file system for the workload partitions created by default is built into the ROOTVG of the global environment, and a load partition of the system type can specify its own ROOTVG when it is created. The advantage of owning a private ROOTVG is that you can allocate storage devices and storage adapters that use the host global environment, and the types of devices currently supported are disk and tape devices in the SAN environment, physical or virtual fibre cards, and VSCSI disks. And only AIX7.1 supports allocating fiber cards to the load partition.
Network address

LAM needs a similar network for each AIX system node and migrated workload partition, which is in the same network subnet.
Migrating domains relocation domain and migration policies relocation Policy

Migration domains (relocation domain) are combinations of several AIX systems that have Wpar Manager Agent installed and wpar-capable, and the migration of Wpars is limited to the same domain. Migration domains are one of the groups of IBM Systems Director and can be associated with migration policies (relocation policy), which can be automatically migrated to additional nodes in the same domain when the workload of the source node reaches the limits defined by the policy. A node can only belong to a specific domain.
AIX V7.1 new features for Wpars