What’s missing from the POWER8 system on the slide below? That’s right, there’s no AIX 5.3 partition! You cannot run AIX 5.3 natively on a POWER8 system.

 

image

 

What would you say if I told you could run AIX 5.3 on a POWER8 system? No? Well you can, if you use a versioned WPAR! J

 

It is documented that versioned WPARs are supported with both POWER7 and POWER8 hardware. Refer to the following link:

 

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_aix_71/com.ibm.aix.wpar/wpar_version_prerque.htm

 

image

 

I tested this in my lab. It worked as advertised. I simply ran the mkwpar command to restore an AIX 5.3 TL12 SP9 image and several minutes later I had an AIX 5.3 vWPAR up and running on my POWER8 system (S824).

 

# lsconf | grep POWER

Processor Type: PowerPC_POWER8

Processor Implementation Mode: POWER 8

 

# lslpp -l vwpar*
  Fileset                      Level  State      Description
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Path: /usr/lib/objrepos
  vwpar.images.53            1.1.2.0  COMMITTED  Versioned WPAR 5.3 Support
                                                 Images
  vwpar.images.base          1.1.2.0  COMMITTED  Versioned WPAR Base Support
                                                 Images
  vwpar.sysmgt               1.1.2.0  COMMITTED  Versioned WPAR Management
 

#  mkwpar -n p8wpar1 -D rootvg=yes devname=hdisk1 -B /cg/53gibbo.mksysb  -C –O

…

 

# lswpar

Name     State  Type  Hostname  Directory       RootVG WPAR

------------------------------------------------------------

p8wpar1  A      S     p8wpar1   /wpars/p8wpar1  yes

 

# oslevel -s

7100-03-03-1415

 

# clogin p8wpar1 oslevel -s

5300-12-09-1341

 

*******************************************************************************

*                                                                             *

*                                                                             *

*  Welcome to AIX Version 5.3!                                                *

*                                                                             *

*                                                                             *

*  Please see the README file in /usr/lpp/bos for information pertinent to    *

*  this release of the AIX Operating System.                                  *

*                                                                             *

*                                                                             *

*******************************************************************************

Last login: Wed Oct 15 20:41:36 2014 on /dev/Global from pvc2.meldemo.au.ibm.com

 

# lsconf | grep POWER

Processor Implementation Mode: POWER 8

# oslevel -s

5300-12-09-1341