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links defi ned on the FICON Express SX channel cards are
up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) and 250 meters (820 feet)
for 50 and 62.5 micron multimode fi ber, respectively. The
maximum unrepeated distances for 2 Gbps links defi ned
on the FICON Express SX channel cards are up to 300
meters and 120 meters for 50 and 62.5 micron multimode
fi ber, respectively. The FICON Express channel cards are
designed to reduce the data droop effect that made long
distances not viable for ESCON. This distance capability is
becoming increasingly important as enterprises are moving
toward remote I/O, vaulting for disaster recovery and
Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex
™
for availability.
Shared infrastructure
FICON (FC-SB-2 Fibre Channel Single-Byte Command
Code Set-2) has been adopted by INCITS (International
Committee for Information Technology Standards) as a
standard to the Fibre Channel Architecture. Using open
connectivity standards leads to shared I/O fi ber cabling
and switch infrastructures, facilitated data sharing, storage
management and SAN implementation, and integration
between the mainframe and UNIX
®
/Intel
®
technologies.
Native FICON Channels
Native FICON channels and devices can help to reduce
bandwidth constraints and channel contention to enable
easier server consolidation, new application growth, large
business intelligence queries and exploitation of e-business.
Currently, the IBM TotalStorage
®
Enterprise Storage Server
®
(ESS) Models F10, F20 and 800 have two host adapters
to support native FICON. These host adapters each have
one port per card and can either be FC 3021 for long
wavelength or FC 3032 for short wavelength on the F10/
F20, or FC 3024 for long wavelength and 3025 for short
wavelength on the 800. All three models can support up
to 16 FICON ports per ESS. The Model 800 is 2 Gb link
capable. The IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Control-
ler
3590 Model A60 provides up to two FICON interfaces
which can coexist with ESCON on the same box. Enter-
prise Tape Controller 3592-J70 provides up to four FICON
interfaces, which can exist with ESCON on the same box.
The 3592-J70 is designed to provide up to 1.5 times the
throughput of the Model A60. Customers can utilize IBM’s
highest capacity, highest performance tape drive to sup-
port their new business models.
Many Fibre Channel directors provide dynamic connectiv-
ity to native FICON control units. The IBM 2032 models
001, 064 and 140 (resell of the McDATA ED-5000, and
Intrepid 6000 Series Directors) are 32-, 64- and 140-port
high availability directors. The IBM 2042 Models 001, 128
and 256 (resell of the CNT FC/9000 Directors) are 64-,
128- and 256-port high availability directors. All have fea-
tures that provide interface support to allow the unit to be
managed by System Automation for OS/390. The McDATA
Intrepid 6000 Series Directors and CNT FC/9000 Directors
support 2 Gbps link data rates as well.
The FICON Express features now support attachment to
the IBM M12 Director (2109-M12). The IBM M12 Director
supports attachment of FICON Express channels on the
z990 via native FICON (FC CHPID type) and Fibre Channel
Protocol (FCP CHPID type) supporting attachment to SCSI
disks in Linux environments.