ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 3 - IBM Redbooks

8.8 FICON host adapters
FICON host adapters
Up to 16 FICON host adapters
One port with an LC connector type
per adapter (2 Gigabit Link)
Long wave or short wave
Up to 200 MB/sec full duplex
Up to 10 km distance with long wave
and 300 m with short wave
Each host adapter communicates
with both clusters
Each FICON channel link can
address all 16 ESS CU images
Logical paths
256 CU logical paths per FICON port
4096 logical paths per ESS
Addresses
16,384 device addresses per channel
FICON distances
10 km distance (without repeaters)
100 km distance (with extenders)
Figure 8-8 FICON host adapter
FICON host adapters
FICON, or Fiber Connection, is based on the standard Fibre Channel architecture, and
therefore shares the attributes associated with Fibre Channel. This includes the common
FC-0, FC-1, and FC-2 architectural layers, the 100 MBps bidirectional (full-duplex) data
transfer rate, and the point-to-point distance capability of 10 kilometers. The ESCON
protocols have been mapped to the FC-4 layer, the Upper Level Protocol (ULP) layer, of the
Fibre Channel architecture. All this provides a full-compatibility interface with previous S/390
software and puts the zSeries servers in the Fibre Channel industry standard.
FICON versus ESCON
FICON goes beyond ESCON limits:
► Addressing limit, from 1024 device addresses per channel to up to 16,384 (maximum of
4096 devices supported within one ESS).
► Up to 256 control unit logical paths per port.
► FICON channel to ESS allows multiple concurrent I/O connections (the ESCON channel
supports only one I/O connection at one time).
► Greater channel and link bandwidth: FICON has up to 10 times the link bandwidth of
ESCON (1 Gbps full-duplex, compared to 200 MBps half duplex). FICON has up to more
than four times the effective channel bandwidth.
► FICON path consolidation using switched point-to-point topology.
458 ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 3
FICON
zSeries