HP Mainframe Connectivity Design Guide

Figure 11 DC SAN Backbone Directors connected with ICLs
26470a
ICLs = 0 Hop
ISLs = 1 Hop
DC Backbone
Switch ID = 1
DC Backbone
Switch ID = 2
Switch ID = 3
Even if there are no other FICON directors in the fabric, when using ICLs, the SN8000B and DC
SAN Director Switches are considered a cascaded FICON fabric and must adhere to all
configuration rules for cascaded fabrics, including using 2-byte destination link addresses. For
more information, see “Cascaded FICON fabric” (page 16) and “Defining FICON routes” (page
24).
Fabric rules
This section describes the fabric rules for B-series FICON directors and other factors you should
consider when building B-series FICON fabrics.
Operating systems and storage products
The fabric rules for B-series FICON directors apply to SANs that include the following operating
systems and storage products:
Storage productsOperating systems
P9500z/OS
XP20000/24000z/VM
XP10000/12000OS/390
XP128/1024
For more information, see “Mainframe rules” (page 86), “P9500 storage system rules” (page 103),
and “XP storage system rules” (page 110).
Fabric rules for B-series FICON directors
The following fabric rules apply to all B-series FICON directors. FICON rules, especially for routing
and ISL hops, are more restrictive than FCP rules. Therefore, the maximum number of directors in
a fabric might not be practical for a FICON environment.
Table 10 (page 40) describes the rules for creating a SAN with B-series FICON directors.
Fabric rules 39