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Choose the OSA-Express3 features that best meet your
business requirements.
To meet the demands of your applications, provide granu-
larity, facilitate redundant paths, and satisfy your infra-
structure requirements, there are fi ve features from which
to choose. In the 10 GbE environment, Short Reach (SR) is
being offered for the fi rst time.
Feature Infrastructure Ports per
Feature
OSA-Express3 GbE LX
Single mode fi ber
4
OSA-Express3 10 GbE LR
Single mode fi ber
2
OSA-Express3 GbE SX Multimode fi ber 4
OSA-Express3 10 GbE SR Multimode fi ber 2
OSA-Express3 1000BASE-T Copper 4
Note that software PTFs or a new release may be required
(depending on CHPID type) to support all ports.
OSA-Express3 for reduced latency and improved throughput
To help reduce latency, the OSA-Express3 features now
have an Ethernet hardware data router; what was previ-
ously done in fi rmware (packet construction, inspection,
and routing) is now performed in hardware. With direct
memory access, packets fl ow directly from host memory
to the LAN without fi rmware intervention. OSA-Express3
is also designed to help reduce the round-trip networking
time between systems. Up to a 45% reduction in latency at
the TCP/IP application layer has been measured.
The OSA-Express3 features are also designed to improve
throughput for standard frames (1492 byte) and jumbo
frames (8992 byte) to help satisfy the bandwidth require-
ments of your applications. Up to a 4x improvement has
been measured (compared to OSA-Express2).
The above statements are based on OSA-Express3 perfor-
mance measurements performed in a laboratory environ-
ment on a System z10 and do not represent actual fi eld
measurements. Results may vary.
Port density or granularity
The OSA-Express3 features have Peripheral Component
Interconnect Express (PCI-E) adapters. The previous table
identifi es whether the feature has two or four ports for LAN
connectivity. Select the density that best meets your busi-
ness requirements. Doubling the port density on a single
feature helps to reduce the number of I/O slots required for
high-speed connectivity to the Local Area Network.
The OSA-Express3 10 GbE features support Long Reach
(LR) using 9 micron single mode fi ber optic cabling and
Short Reach (SR) using 50 or 62.5 micron multimode
fi ber optic cabling. The connector is new; it is now the
small form factor, LC Duplex connector. Previously the SC
Duplex connector was supported for LR. The LC Duplex
connector is common with FICON, ISC-3, and OSA-
Express2 Gigabit Ethernet LX and SX.
The OSA-Express3 features are exclusive to System z10.
There are operating system dependencies for exploitation
of two ports in OSD mode per PCI-E adapter. Whether it
is a 2-port or a 4-port feature, only one of the ports will be
visible on a PCI-E adapter if operating system exploitation
updates are not installed.
OSA-Express3 Ethernet features – Summary of benefi ts
OSA-Express3 10 GbE LR (single mode fi ber), 10 GbE SR
(multimode fi ber), GbE LX (single mode fi ber), GbE SX
(multimode fi ber), and 1000BASE-T (copper) are designed
for use in high-speed enterprise backbones, for local
area network connectivity between campuses, to connect
server farms to System z10, and to consolidate fi le servers
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