A WPAR is a level higher in the virtualization. Available since AIX 6.1, it allows to host on a single OS up to 8000 WPAR. System WPAR can be used for most application that don't use physical resources.
WPAR has appear with AIX 6.1. There are 2 types of WPAR:
WPAR improvements with the AIX 6.1 and later operating systems
| AIX 6.1 Base Level (GA) | - Initial support, including mobility using synchronous checkpoint/restart |
| - First WPAR manager release | |
| AIX 6.1 TL1 | - Network File System (NFS) support for WPAR |
| AIX 6.1 TL2 | - Asynchronous mobility |
| - Per-WPAR routing | |
| - Name-mapped network interfaces | |
| - Network Installation Management (NIM) support for WPAR | |
| AIX 6.1 TL3 | - Storage disk devices support |
| AIX 6.1 TL4 | - rootvg WPAR |
| - SAN mobility | |
| - WPAR manager integration with IBM Systems Director | |
| - VxFS support | |
| AIX 6.1 TL5 | - WPAR Error Logging Framework (RAS) |
| AIX 6.1 TL6 | - Virtual SCSI (vSCSI) disk support |
| - WPAR migration to AIX 7.1 |
| AIX 7.1 Base Level (GA) | - Everything that is supported in AIX 6.1, plus Fiber Channel (FC) adapter support, Versioned WPARs running AIX 5.2, and Trusted Kernel extension support AIX version WPAR improvement |
| AIX 7.1 TL1 | - Versioned WPARs running AIX 5.3 |
Since AIX 6.1 TL4, you can create a system WPAR with his own rootvg (/usr and /opt not shared); this method is used on AIX 7.1 to virtualize WPAR in AIX 5.2 and 5.3.