HP Mainframe Connectivity Design Guide

IBM z990

IBM z990 processors support:

• Two LCSSs

• Maximum of 60 FICON Express cards and/or FICON Express 2 cards, for a total of 240

FICON ports

When building a FICON SAN with zSeries processors, consider the following:

• The maximum number of FICON channel cards depends on the mainframe model. If the

mainframe contains other channel cards (for example, ESCON or OSA), this reduces the

maximum number of FICON channel cards.

• zSeries processors support single-switch SANs and cascaded directors on z/OS systems V1R3

or later and z/VM systems V4R4 or later.

Prior to this release, mainframes supported single-byte destination link addressing only, where

the byte identified the egress port on the director. With 2-byte addressing, the first byte of the

destination link identifies the destination director, and the second byte identifies the egress

port on the director for the device.

• FCV mode channels connect to a FICON bridge card in an IBM 9032 Model 5 ESCON

director (discontinued).

• FCV mode channels cannot connect to a FICON CU or FICON director.

• FCP mode channels cannot connect to a FICON CU or FICON director. Use FCP mode to

connect to Fibre Channel directors and devices from an LPAR running zLinux. zSeries processors

do not support point-to-point or arbitrated loop topologies in FCP mode.

IBM z9/z10 processor FICON support rules

IBM z9/z10 processors run the z/OS operating system and share the following FICON support

features:

• FICON native (FC) mode CHPID support

• FCV mode CHPID support

NOTE: Not all zSeries channel cards support FCV mode.

• FCP mode CHPID support

NOTE: Not all zSeries channel cards support FCP mode.

• Point-to-point support (directly attached to the CU with no FICON director)

• Single-switch fabric support

• Cascaded director support

• 2319 and 2320 FICON Express channel cards (discontinued)

• 3319 and 3320 FICON Express 2 channel cards (discontinued)

• 3321, 3322, 3323, and 3324 FICON Express 4 channel cards

When building a FICON SAN with z9 or z10 processors, consider the following:

• The maximum number of FICON channel cards depends on the mainframe model. If the

mainframe contains other channel cards (for example, ESCON or OSA), this reduces the

maximum number of FICON channel cards.

• FCV channels are used to connect to a FICON bridge card in an IBM 9032 Model 5 ESCON

director (discontinued).

IBM z9/z10 processor FICON support rules 89