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FICON Express8 is designed to satisfy the performance requirements of bandwidth-hungry applications.
FICON Express8 exploiting zHPF is designed to deliver up to 730 MegaBytes per second (MBps) of throughput for full-duplex data transfers, and up to 510 MBps of throughput for full-duplex data transfers utilizing native FICON.

Full-duplex data transfers Megabytes per second Large sequential read/write mix.

FICON Express8 exploiting zHPF is designed to deliver up to 800 MBps of throughput for half-duplex data transfers consisting of all reads or all writes and up to 510 MBps of throughput for half-duplex transfers consisting of all reads or all writes utilizing native FICON. Compare FICON to ESCON at 17 MBps.

Half-duplex data transfers Megabytes per second Large sequential All reads or all writes.

FICON Express8 exploiting zHPF is designed to deliver up to 52,000 start I/Os per second and up to 20,000 start I/Os per second utilizing native FICON on System z10. Notice ESCON’s capability of 1200 start I/Os per second.

Start I/Os I/O per second - I/O driverbenchmark, 4k clock size, channel 100% utilized.

*These measurements for zHPF and native FICON are examples of the maximum MB/sec and IO/sec that can be achieved in a laboratory environment using one FICON Express8 channel (at 8 Gbps) on a System z10 server with z/OS V1.10 and no other processing occurring and do not represent actual field measurements. Details are available upon request.

For detailed performance information on FICON Express8 on System z10, refer to IBM System z10 FICON Express8 Channel Performance Version 1 (PDF, 192KB) technical paper.

For detailed information on High Performance FICON on System z (zHPF) using FICON Express4 and FICON Express2 on System z10 to provide optimization for OLTP workloads, refer to IBM System z10 I/O and High Performance FICON for System z Channel Performance (PDF, 248KB) technical paper.

For detailed performance information on FICON Express4 utilizing FICON, refer to the IBM System z9 I/O and FICON Express4 Channel Performance (PDF, 200KB) technical paper.

For detailed performance information on FICON Express2, consult the FICON Express2 Channel Performance (PDF, 631KB) technical paper.

*These measurements for zHPF and native FICON are examples of the maximum MB/sec and IO/sec that can be achieved in a laboratory environment using one FICON Express8 channel (at 8 Gbps) on a System z10 server with z/OS V1.10 and no other processing occurring and do not represent actual field measurements. Details are available upon request.

For detailed information on High Performance FICON on System z (zHPF) using FICON Express4 and FICON Express2 on System z10 to provide optimization for OLTP workloads, refer to IBM System z10 I/O and High Performance FICON for System z Channel Performance (PDF, 248KB) technical paper.

For detailed performance information on FICON Express4 utilizing FICON, refer to IBM System z9 I/O and FICON Express4 Channel Performance (PDF, 200KB) technical paper.

For detailed performance information on FICON Express2, refer to FICON Express2 Channel Performance (PDF, 631KB) technical paper.

Questions?

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Cables

Do you have the appropriate FICON jumpers, patch cables, and conversion kits for your server? For all your cabling needs see the System z Fiber Cabling Services in the IBM Resource Link Services section (registration required)

IBM education

Are you ready for FICON? Learn about FICON Planning, Operation, Implementation, and Problem Determination, Course #ES326

Resources

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