FICON Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001771-01, June 2010)

FICON Administrator’s Guide 1

53-1001771-01

Chapter

Introducing FICON

In this chapter

•FICON overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

•FICON concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

•FICON configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

•Access Control in FICON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

•FICON commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

FICON overview

IBM Fibre Connection (FICON

) is an industry-standard, high-speed input/output (I/O) interface for

mainframe connections to storage devices. This book discusses support offered by Fabric OS in

intermix mode operations, in which FICON and Fibre Channel technology work together.

For specific information about intermix mode and other aspects of FICON, refer to the IBM

Redbook, FICON® Implementation Guide (SG24-6497-01), and Implementing an IBM/Brocade

SAN with 8 Gbps Directors and Switches (SG24-6116-08).

NOTE

In this guide, the term switch is used to refer to a Brocade switch, director, or backbone platform

unless otherwise noted.

Fabric OS support for FICON

The following Fabric OS standard features support FICON fabrics:

• Blade swapping

Blade swapping allows you to swap an entire blade of the same type allowing you to perform a

FRU replacement with minimal traffic disruption. This feature is available for both FICON

and

open system environments. Blade swapping resolves situations in which the hardware has

failed and the channel configurations cannot be changed quickly. Blade swapping has minimal

or no impact on other switch features.

• Device connection control (DCC) policy

Used to restrict which Fibre Channel device ports can connect to which Fibre Channel switch

ports.

• FICON MIB module

Addresses link incident data for FICON hosts and devices connected to a switch. It

supplements other MIBs used to manage switches and should be used in conjunction with

those other MIBs. For more information, see the Fabric OS MIB Reference.