You can use WPARs when you need an isolated environment, especially if you do not want to create new LPARs because of the limitation of the available resources. Here are a few recommended scenarios:
WPARs share the global resources with other WPARs in the same LPAR, which limits the usefulness of WPARs in some situations.
We recommend not using WPARs in the following situations:
Security: WPAR processes can be seen by the global environment from the central LPAR. If you are running a highly secure type of system, this may be a problem for you from a security standpoint. Further, the root administrator of your LPAR will now have access to your workload partition, possibly compromising the security that the application may require.
Performance: Each WPAR within the LPAR uses the same system resources of the LPAR. You need to be more careful when architecting your system and also when stress testing the system.
Physical devices: Physical devices are not supported within a WPAR. More details on WPAR administration can be found in the IBM red book on WPARs at
Limitations for using Veritas InfoScale products in AIX WPARs: