Cascaded Ficon - Brocade Communications Systems 1606 Administrator's Manual

Cascaded FICON

Cascaded FICON refers to an implementation of FICON that involves one or more FICON channel
paths defined over two FICON switches connected to each other using an Inter-Switch Link (ISL).
The processor interface is connected to one switch, while the storage interface is connected to the
other. This configuration is supported for both disk and tape, with multiple processors, disk
subsystems, and tape subsystems sharing the ISLs between the directors. Multiple ISLs between
the directors are also supported. Cascading between a director and a switch, for example from a
Brocade DCX enterprise-class platform to a Brocade 5100, is also supported.
A cascaded configuration requires a list of authorized switches. This authorization feature, called
fabric binding, is available through the Secure Access Control List feature. The fabric binding policy
allows a predefined list of switches (domains) to exist in the fabric and prevents other switches
from joining the fabric. This type of configuration is described in
page 15.
FIGURE 3
There are hardware and software requirements specific to cascaded FICON:
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FICON Administrator's Guide
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Cascaded FICON
The FICON directors themselves must be from the same vendor (that is, both should be from
Brocade).
The mainframes must be zSeries machines or System z processors: z800, 890, 900, 990, z9
BC, z9 EC, z10 BC and EC. Cascaded FICON requires 64-bit architecture to support the 2-byte
addressing scheme. Cascaded FICON is not supported on 9672 G5/G6 mainframes.
z/OS version 1.4 or later, or z/OS version 1.3 with required PTFs/MCLs to support 2-byte link
addressing (DRV3g and MCL (J11206) or later) is required.
The high integrity fabric feature for the FICON switch must be installed on all switches involved
in the cascaded architecture. For the Brocade 5000 switch and Brocade 48000 director, this
requires Secure Access Control List features. For Brocade M-Series directors or switches, this
is known as SANtegrity Binding, and it requires M-EOS firmware version 4.0 or later.
FICON configurations
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