11Administering Ficon Fabrics; Overview Of Fabric Os Support For Ficon - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

1 1 Administering FICON fabrics
This chapter provides procedures for managing FICON fabrics.

Overview of Fabric OS support for FICON

IBM Fibre Connection (FICON
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® Implementation Guide (SG24-6497-01), and IBM
System Storage: Implementing an IBM SAN (SG24-61 16-06).
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, see the Fabric OS MIB Reference.
• Link incident detection, registration, and reporting
Provides administrative and diagnostic information.
• Switch Connection Control (SCC) policy
Includes switch binding security methods that prevent unauthorized devices from joining a fabric.
These management tools provide further support:
• Fabric Manager
Fabric Manager is an optional software program that 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
Web Tools is an embedded GUI management tool that can be used to manage a director (switch) that
supports FICON and Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) devices and traffic.
Some licenses are installed and activated on the switch at the factory. Use a management interface to
verify that the required licenses are installed and activated on the switch.
The Secure Access Control List (ACL) feature provides the following fabric, switch, and port binding
features:
• Fabric binding is a security method for restricting switches within a multiple-switch fabric. The SCC
policy prevents unauthorized switches from joining a fabric.
• Switch binding is a security method for restricting devices that connect to a particular switch. If the
device is another switch, this is handled by the SCC policy. If the device is a host or storage device, the
Device Connection Control (DCC) policy binds those devices to a particular switch. Policies range from
completely restrictive to reasonably flexible, based upon customer needs.
• Port binding is a security method for restricting host or storage devices that connect to particular switch
ports. The DCC policy also binds device ports to switch ports. Policies range from completely restrictive
to reasonably flexible, based on customer needs.
SCC ACL with strict fabric-wide consistency is necessary for FICON switch binding.
®
) is an industry-standard, high-speed input/output (I/O) interface for
Fabric OS 6.x administrator guide 261