DCFM Enterprise User Manual (53-1001775-01, June 2010)

DCFM Enterprise User Manual 467

53-1001775-01

Chapter

FICON Environments

In this chapter

•FICON Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

•Configuring a PDCM Allow/Prohibit Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

•Copying a PDCM configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

•Activating a PDCM configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474

•Deleting a PDCM configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

•Changing the PDCM matrix display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

•Configuring a cascaded FICON fabric. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

•Merging two cascaded FICON fabrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

•Port Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

•Swapping blades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

FICON Configurations

IBM Fibre Connection (FICON) is a protocol used between IBM (and compatible) mainframes and

storage. FICON configurations can be categorized into three types, based on complexity:

• Point-to-point configurations that do not use a switch.

• Switched point-to-point configurations, also called single switch configurations, connect a host

channel to a storage control unit using a single switch. In this type of configuration, the

channel is configured to use single-byte addressing.

• Cascaded configurations, also called high integrity fabrics, connect host channels and storage

control units that reside in different domains. Cascaded FICON fabrics must be configured as

high integrity fabrics. In this type of configuration, the channel is configured to use two-byte link

addressing. Figure 195 and Figure 196 are examples of cascaded FICON configurations. IBM

does not support configurations that have more than two domains in a path from a FICON

Channel interface to a FICON Control Unit interface to CTC except under special circumstances.

FIGURE 195 Cascaded configuration, two domains