Swapping Ports; Ficon Tape Acceleration - HP Cisco MDS 9216 - Fabric Switch Configuration Manual

Chapter 36 Configuring FICON
S e n d d o c u m e n t a t i o n c o m m e n t s t o m d s f e e d b a c k - d o c @ c i s c o . c o m

Swapping Ports

To swap ports using Device Manager, follow these steps:
Select two Fibre Channel ports by holding down the CTRL key and clicking them.
Step 1
Step 2 Choose FICON > Swap Selected Ports (see
Figure 36-19

FICON Tape Acceleration

The sequential nature of tape devices causes each I/O operation to the tape device over an FCIP link to
incur the latency of the FCIP link. Throughput drastically decreases as the round-trip time through the
FCIP link increases, leading to longer backup windows. Also, after each I/O operation, the tape device
is idle until the next I/O arrives. Starting and stopping of the tape head reduces the lifespan of the tape,
except when I/O operations are directed to a virtual tape.
Cisco MDS SAN-OS software provides acceleration for the following FICON tape write operations:
•
•
FICON tape acceleration over FCIP provides the following advantages:
•
•
•
Note FICON tape read acceleration over FCIP is not supported.
Figure 36-20
OL-16184-01, Cisco MDS SAN-OS Release 3.x
FICON Swap Selected Ports
The link between mainframe and native tape drives (both IBM and Sun/STK)
The back-end link between the VSM (Virtual Storage Management) and tape drive (Sun/STK)
Efficiently utilizes the tape device by decreasing idle time
More sustained throughput as latency increases
Similar to FCP tape acceleration, and does not conflict with it
through Figure 36-23
Figure 36-19).
show supported configurations:
Cisco MDS 9000 Family CLI Configuration Guide
FICON Tape Acceleration
36-33