HP Mainframe Connectivity Design Guide

• FICON CUP
• High-integrity fabric features, including:
Fabric binding—Enables the fabric to prevent a director from being added◦
◦ Persistent domain IDs—Prevents a director address from being changed automatically
when a duplicate director address is added to the fabric
◦ In-order delivery—Guarantees in-order delivery of FICON frames across the fabric
Each FICON director in a fabric must have a unique domain ID and a unique switch ID.
• HP recommends that the switch ID be the same as the domain ID. Setting the domain and
switch IDs to the same value eliminates confusion about which director is referenced in the
mainframe configuration and system messages.
• The switch ID in the HCD or IOCP definitions identifies the director. It can be a two-digit
hexadecimal value between x'00' and x'FF'.
• The domain ID range for a FICON director depends on the director series. Some B-series,
C-series, and McDATA directors use different ranges of domain IDs and also use a different
default domain ID. For more information, see the following:
◦ “B-series FICON directors and fabric rules” (page 29)
◦ “C-series FICON directors and fabric rules” (page 46)
◦ “McDATA FICON directors and fabric rules” (page 63)
Design considerations
To design or modify a FICON SAN, evaluate the following:
• Geographic layout
The locations of campuses, buildings, mainframes, and storage systems determine the required
SAN connections. SAN infrastructure components support long-distance connections and
multiple, interswitch cable segments. FICON supports a maximum unrepeated distance of
100 km between the mainframe and the CU.
For information about supported distances, see “Storage product interface and transport
distance rules” (page 75) and “FICON and FICON SAN extension” (page 120).
• Data availability
A resilient SAN environment minimizes vulnerability to fabric or device failures and maximizes
performance. A mixture of availability levels can be implemented in the same SAN, depending
on the level of protection required for specific applications or data. Most FICON SANs require
fully redundant fabrics with multiple paths from the mainframe to the storage system. FICON
allows up to eight channel paths from an LPAR in the mainframe to each storage CU or LCU.
For information about availability levels, see “Data availability” (page 19) and “FICON SAN
best practices” (page 154).
• Connectivity
Provide enough ports to connect mainframes, storage systems, and fabric components. To
create a fully redundant, high-capacity FICON SAN, you use multiple, parallel fabrics.
For information about the connections available in a FICON SAN fabric topology, see “FICON
SAN fabric topologies” (page 15).
• Storage capacity
Calculate the total storage capacity requirement and determine the type and number of storage
systems needed for current and future requirements.
Design considerations 13