HP Mainframe Connectivity Design Guide

4 C-series FICON directors and fabric rules
This chapter describes C-series FICON directors and the rules for building C-series fabrics.
C-series FICON directors
C-series FICON directors can be configured as a single-switch fabric or a cascaded fabric. In a
cascaded fabric, there is a 1-hop maximum between the mainframe and the CU (a maximum of
two directors in a data path). The fabric can have more than two directors provided the 1-hop
maximum is enforced. C-series FICON directors support between 14 and 528 ports (with a maximum
of 256 ports per FICON domain ID), depending on the model. They also support an intermix
environment. For more information about intermix, see “FICON SAN best practices” (page 154).
C-series FICON directors require the mainframe package license, which includes the following:
• Switch cascading—Provides support for cascaded FICON directors.
• Fabric binding—Ensures that ISLs are enabled only between directors that have been authorized
in the fabric binding configuration. This feature helps prevent unauthorized directors from
joining the fabric or disrupting current fabric operations.
• Persistent domain ID—Required to support cascaded FICON directors.
• FICON Tape Accelerator—Reduces application latency caused by tape read and write
operations over long distance FCIP ISLs.
• VSANs—Provides hardware-based partitioning of a single, physical SAN into multiple VSANs
to separate FICON and FCP traffic. VSANs allow FICON and FCP ports (intermix) on the
same director without compromising scalability, availability, manageability, and network
security.
• Port swapping—Enables you to swap port numbers between two FICON ports. Therefore,
you can move a CU or CHPID to a different physical port without changing the mainframe
configuration. This feature is useful while troubleshooting a connectivity problem. You can
swap FICON port numbers on the same switching modules, or across different switching
modules.
• FICON CUP—Optional CU port that enables the mainframe to monitor and manage the director.
NOTE: HP recommends that you enable CUP on all FICON directors so that the mainframe can
monitor, control, and gather statistics for them. For more information, see “SAN scaling” (page
11) (FICON CUP bullet).
The C-series FICON directors offer:
• High availability
• Scalability
• Cost efficiency
46 C-series FICON directors and fabric rules