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FICON Express8 - 2, 4, or 8 Gbps
The FICON Express8 features help you prepare your I/O infrastructure for the future. FICON Express8 continues the tradition of offering more capabilities with each new generation of FICON channel. The features were designed with the future in mind, while remembering the past, by supporting the data serving leadership of System z while enabling improved data access using High Performance FICON on System z (zHPF), as well as providing the ability to autonegotiate to the currently support link data rates of 2 and 4 Gbps which may be required for existing infrastructures.
FICON Express8:
- Allows for the consolidation of existing FICON Express, FICON Express2, and FICON Express4 channels onto fewer FICON Express8 channels while maintaining and enhancing performance
- Performance improvements for native FICON, High Performance FICON for System z (zHPF), and Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) ensures the System z10 servers continue to allow your systems to grow as your business grows
- Up to 84 features (336 channels) on z10 BC and up to 32 features (128 channels) on z10
- FICON Express8 10KM LX for the single mode fiber optic cabling environment
- FICON Express8 SX for the multimode fiber optic cabling environment.
FICON Express Channels:
The z10 EC supports up to 336 FICON Express8 channels each one operating at 2, 4 or 8 Gbps/sec auto-negotiated. The z10 BC supports up to 128 FICON Express8 channels each one operating at 2, 4 or 8 Gbps/sec auto-negotiated. The FICON Express8 features are available in long wavelength (LX) and short wavelength (SX). For customers exploiting the 10kilometer (6.2 miles) LX feature, this feature uses 9 micron single mode fiber optic cables. For customers exploiting the SX feature, this feature supports use of a 50/125 micrometer multimode fiber optic cable or a 62.5/125-micrometer multimode fiber optic cable terminated with an LC Duplex connector.
The IBM System z10 Business Class (z10 BC) continues to have available the two-channel features (FICON Express4-2C SX and FICON Express4-2C 4KM LX) that provide attractive entry pricing.
Native FICON and zHPF software support
When FICON Express8 channels are defined as native FICON or channel-to-channel (CTC) the following operating system support is required on System z10:
- z/OS V1.7 with the IBM Lifecycle Extension for z/OS V1.7 (5637-A01)
- z/VM V5.3
- z/VSE V4.1
- z/TPF V1.1
- TPF V4.1 at PUT 16
- Linux on System z distributions:
- Novell SUSE SLES 9, SLES 10, and SLES 11
- Red Hat RHEL 4 and RHEL 5
When FICON Express8 channels are supporting zHPF single-track operations the following operating system support is required on System z10:
- z/OS V1.8, V1.9, or V1.10 with PTFs
- z/OS V1.7 with the IBM Lifecycle Extension for z/OS V1.7 (5637-A01) with PTFs
- Linux on System z distributions:
- IBM is working with its Linux distribution partners to include support in future Linux on System z distribution releases.
When FICON Express8 channels are supporting zHPF multitrack operations the following operating system support is required on System z10:
- z/OS V1.9 and V1.10 with PTFs.
Channel Support
The FICON Express8 features have two modes of operation designed for connectivity to servers, switches/directors, disks, tapes, and printers:
- CHPID type FC - zHPF, native FICON, and FICON Channel-to-Channel (CTC) traffic for the z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, z/TPF, and Linux on System z environments
- CHPID type FCP - Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) for attachment to SCSI devices in the z/VM, z/VSE, and Linux on System z environments.