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InfoScale™ 9.0 Virtualization Guide - AIX

Last Published: 2025-09-09

Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (9.0)

Platform: AIX

About the AIX PowerVM virtualization technology

AIX logical partition or LPAR is a virtual machine in the IBM PowerVM virtualization technology.

Virtualizated technologies such as IBM PowerVM enable:

Better utilization of IT resources and sharing of I/O resources to lower costs
Greater flexibility to re-allocate resources to applications as needed
Simplification of the infrastructure management by making workloads independent of hardware resources

IBM LPAR virtualization components and terminology are identified in Table: :

Table:

IBM LPAR virtualization technology	Description
IBM logical partition (LPAR)	A virtual server with a subset of the physical server's processors, memory, and I/O adapter with its own operating system instance and applications.
Dynamic Logical Partition (DLPAR)	A virtual server with the ability to add or remove processors, network, or storage adapters while the server remains online.
Micro-partition	A virtual server with shared processor pools with support for up to10 micro-partitions per processor core. Depending upon the Power server, you can run up to 254 independent micro-partitions within a single physical Power server. Processor resources can be assigned at a granularity of 1/100th of a core. Also known as shared processor partition.
IBM LPARs with dedicated I/O	The baseline configuration is a traditional AIX deployment with dedicated HBAs and NICs. The deployment may include partitions with virtual CPUs or partitions that support dynamic re-configuration.
IBM LPARs with Virtual I/O Servers	With Virtual I/O Servers LPARs can share physical resources. The VIOS provides virtual SCSI, virtual fibre channel, and virtual networking for sharing. Sharing of resources between LPARs enables more efficient utilization of physical resources and facilitates consolidation.
POWER Hypervisor	The POWER Hypervisor is responsible for dispatching the logical partition workload across the shared physical processors. The POWER Hypervisor also enforces partition security, and provides inter-partition communication that enables the Virtual I/O Server's virtual SCSI and virtual Ethernet function.
Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)	The Virtual I/O Server facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources among LPARs within the server. The Virtual I/O Server provides virtual SCSI target, virtual fibre channel, Shared Ethernet Adapter, PowerVM Active Memory Sharing and PowerVM Client Partition Mobility capability to client logical partitions within the physical server.
VIO client	The VIO client is a client LPAR that consumes resources shared by the VIO Server.
Virtual SCSI	Virtual disks vSCSI provided by the VIO server to reduce the need for dedicated physical disk resources for client partitions. vSCSI can be full LUNs or logical volumes.
Virtual Ethernet	In-memory network connections between partitions by POWER Hypervisor that reduce or eliminate the need for separate physical Ethernet Adapters in each LPAR.
Shared Ethernet Adapter	The Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) enables network traffic outside the physical server by routing it through a software-based layer 2 switch running in the VIO Server.
N_Port ID Virtualization	Virtual HBAs which enable multiple LPARs/micro-partitions to access SAN devices through shared HBAs providing direct Fibre Channel connections from client partitions to storage. Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are owned by VIO Server Partition.
Workload Partitions (WPARs)	Workload Partitions enable administrators to virtualize the AIX operating system, by partitioning an AIX operating system instance into multiple environments. Each environment within the AIX operating system instance is called a workload partition (WPAR). One WPAR can host applications and isolate the applications from applications executing in other WPARs. WPAR is a pure software solution and has no dependencies on hardware features.
WPAR Manager	The WPAR manager allows an administrator to create, clone, and remove WPAR definitions, or start and stop WPARs. It enables Live Application Mobility which allows relocation of WPARs from one server to another without restarting the application. The WPAR Manager includes a policy engine to automate relocation of WPARs between systems based on system load and other metrics.
Application WPAR	An application Workload Partition (WPAR) is a lightweight partition in which individual applications run. An application WPAR can only run application processes, not system daemons such as inetd cron. An application WPAR is a temporary object which is removed when the application is completed.
System WPAR	A system Workload Partition (WPAR) has a private copy of many of the AIX OS parameters. If desired, it can have its own dedicated, completely writable file systems. Most OS daemons can run, and each system WPAR has its own user privilege space.
Live Partition Mobility	Live Partition Mobility enables greater control over the usage of resources in the data center by enabling the migration of a logical partition from one physical system to another. This feature enables the transfer of a configuration from source to destination without disrupting the hosted applications or the setup of the operating system and applications
Live Application Mobility	Live Application Mobility enables the planned migration of workloads from one system to another without interrupting the application and can be used to perform a planned firmware installation on a server.
Active Memory Sharing	Active Memory Sharing is a virtualization technology that enables multiple partitions to share a pool of physical memory. AMS increases system memory utilization and reduces the amount of physical memory that the system requires.
Active Memory Expansion	Active Memory Expansion relies on compression of in-memory data to increase the amount of data that can be placed into memory. This feature expands the effective memory capacity of a POWER7 system. The operating system manages the in-memory data compression, which is transparent to applications and users.
Hardware Management Console (HMC)	Dedicated hardware/software to configure and administer a partition capable POWER server.
Integrated Virtual Manager	Management console which runs in the VIO for partition management of entry level systems.
Lx86	Supports x86 Linux applications running on POWER.

InfoScale products can be used in LPAR-based virtualization environments to provide advanced storage management, mission-critical clustering, and failover capabilities. This guide illustrates some reference configurations for the use of InfoScale products with IBM Power virtualization. These reference configurations can be customized to fit most implementations. An assumption is made that the reader understands the AIX operating system, including its architecture, as well as how to configure and manage LPARs using the management software already provided by AIX. There is also an expectation that the user is familiar with the basic InfoScale products software and is well versed with its administration and management utilities. Additional details regarding IBM AIX, LPARs, and InfoScale products software are available in the additional documentation section.

The InfoScale products support VIO clients that use memory from the Active Memory Sharing (AMS) pool. Arctera recommends that the ratio of the physical memory in the AMS pool should comply with the AIX guidelines.

Active Memory Expansion is configurable per logical partition (LPAR). Active Memory Expansion can be selectively enabled for one or more LPARs on a system. When Active Memory Expansion is enabled for an LPAR, the operating system compresses a portion of the LPAR's memory and leaves the remaining portion of memory uncompressed. The memory is effectively broken up into two pools - a compressed pool and an uncompressed pool. The operating system dynamically varies the amount of memory that is compressed, based on the workload and the configuration of the LPAR.

See the IBM Redpaper PowerVM Virtualization documents for the AIX guidelines.