HP Mainframe Connectivity Design Guide

Table 19 C-series FICON director high-availability feature comparison (continued)
Protocol
nl
support
Port
nl
module
nl
support
Nondisruptive
code activation
Redundant
nl
control
nl
processor
Redundant/
nl
hot-swappable
cooling
Redundant/
hot-swappable
powerModel
Fabric 2 Director
Switch
nl
SN8000C
Supervisor 2A
Fabric 3 Director
Switch
Fabric rules
This section describes the fabric rules for C-series FICON directors and other factors to consider
when building C-series FICON fabrics.
Operating systems and storage products
The fabric rules for C-series FICON directors apply to SANs that include the following operating
systems and storage products:
Storage productsOperating systems
XP7z/OS
P9500z/VM
XP20000/24000OS/390
XP10000/12000
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 C-series FICON directors
The following fabric rules apply to all C-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 a practical number for a FICON environment.
Table 20 (page 58) describes the rules for creating a SAN with C-series FICON directors.
Table 20 C-series FICON fabric rules
Description
Rule
nl
number
All FICON directors in the same fabric or SAN must use the same version of firmware. When updating
director firmware, you can use two successive director firmware versions temporarily in the SAN. For
more information about firmware support, see Table 14 (page 49) and Table 15 (page 49).
1
FICON fabrics and intermix fabrics must contain directors of the same series.2
In addition to the series-specific zoning rules covered in “B-series FICON directors and fabric rules” (page
29), “C-series FICON directors and fabric rules” (page 46), and “McDATA FICON directors and fabric
3
rules” (page 63), FICON directors with CUP enabled also support PDCM. Mainframe fabric administrators
use this matrix to allow or prohibit connectivity between FICON ports on the director. They can also use
PDCM to block or unblock a port. Blocking a port prohibits all connectivity through that port, effectively
disabling it.
There is a maximum of one hop (two directors) between any two communicating FICON
devices—mainframe to CU, or mainframe CTC.
4
58 C-series FICON directors and fabric rules