Technical data

Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide 7-1
Publication Number: 53-0000518-09
Chapter
7
Administering FICON Fabrics
FICON Overview
IBM Fibre Connections (FICON
®
) is an industry-standard, high-speed input/output (I/O) interface for
mainframe connections to storage devices. Fabric OS supports intermix mode operations, in which
FICON and Fibre Channel technology work together. For specific information about intermix mode and
other aspects of FICON, refer to the IBM Redbook, FICON
®
Native Implementation and Reference
Guide.
Fabric OS provides standard support for FICON single-switch operation.
Multiple-switch cascaded FICON operation requires a Brocade Secure Fabric OS license.
Control Unit Port (CUP) operation requires a Brocade FICON CUP license.
The following Fabric OS standard features support FICON fabrics:
• Port swapping
Redirects resources from a failed port to a healthy port without changing the FICON host
configuration. Port swapping is available for both FICON
and open system environments. Port
swapping resolves situations in which the hardware has failed and the channel configurations
cannot be changed quickly. Port swapping has minimal or no impact on other switch features.
• Insistent domain ID (IDID)
Allows the switch to insist on a specific domain ID before joining a fabric. This feature guarantees
that a switch operates only with its preassigned domain ID.
• The FICON MIB module
Addresses link incident data for FICON hosts and devices connected to a switch. It supplements
other MIBs used to manage switches and should be used in conjunction with those other MIBs. For
more information, refer to the Fabric OS MIB Reference Manual.
• Link incident detection, registration, and reporting
Provide administrative and diagnostic information.
These optional features provide further support:
• The Secure Fabric OS optional license
Includes fabric binding, switch binding, and port binding security methods that prevent
unauthorized devices from joining a fabric.
• A Fabric Manager optional license
Can be used to manage a fabric that supports FICON and FCP devices and traffic. This is the
recommended GUI management tool for FICON environments.
• Web Tools
Can be used to manage a director (switch) that supports FICON and Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP)
devices and traffic.