Brocade Communications Systems StoreFabric SN6500B Administrator's Manual page 21

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Qualified FICON cascaded configurations
Not all fibre channel fabrics are qualified for FICON. Cascaded FICON configurations are limited to
well-controlled paths. Only the channel paths described in this section are supported for FICON.
The resulting fabric scenario after ISL failures must not result in an unsupported configuration.
When physical cabling is not practical to enforce these configurations, zoning or traffic isolation
zoning (TI zoning) with failover disabled may be used to ensure unsupported fabrics cannot be
formed. Note that these restrictions apply to logical switches and not the chassis.
Figure 4
to be configured for 2-byte addressing and require IDID and fabric binding. It is recommended that
there be only two domains in a path from a FICON Channel interface to a FICON Control Unit
interface. There are exceptions to the two-domain rule when extended fabric solutions are
deployed.
Channel
FIGURE 4
Figure 5
from channel to control unit, the configuration is supported.
Channel
FIGURE 5
FICON Administrator's Guide
53-1002753-01
The mainframes must be zSeries machines or System z processors: z196, z114, z800, 890,
900, 990, z9 BC, z9 EC, z10 BC, EC, and zEC12. 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.
Two-byte addressing, which has the following requirements:
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E_D_TOV must be the same on all switches in the fabric (typically this is not changed from
the default).
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R_A_TOV must be the same on all switches in the fabric (typically this is not changed from
the default).
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Insistent Domain ID.
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Fabric binding (strict SCC policy).
and Figure 5 show two cascaded configurations. These configurations require Channel A
Switch
Domain ID = 21
A
Cascaded configuration, two switches
illustrates multiple switches cascaded off of switch 21 As long as there is only one hop
Switch
A Domain ID = 21
Cascaded configuration, core-edge architecture
Control
Switch
Domain ID = 22
Control
Switch
Domain ID = 22
Control
Switch
Domain ID = 23
FICON configurations
Unit
B
Unit
C
Unit
D
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