Networking

OSA-Express for connectivity to local area networks (LANs)

IBM mainframes provide an advanced combination of reliability, availability, security, scalability and virtualization, together with the ability to reallocate processing power matching changing business priorities on demand.

Continual advances in hardware and TCP/IP networking capabilities reinforce the mainframe's integral role in your on demand operating environment. The Open Systems Adapter-Express (OSA-Express) family of features, for connectivity to the local area network (LAN), are designed to help satisfy the requirements of bandwidth-hungry applications..

OSA-Express4S - a new form factor of Ethernet for the LAN
A new generation of 10 Gigabit (10 GbE) and Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) OSA-Express features is being introduced on IBM zEnterprise 196 (z196) and IBM zEnterprise 114 (z114) in support of the new PCIe Gen2 host bus and the new PCIe I/O drawer. These new features provide increased port granularity to help you better optimize for redundancy. While the OSA-Express4S GbE features are already capable of line speed, there are significant performance gains with the OSA-Express4S 10 GbE feature. Refer to the What’s New tab.

PCIe I/O drawer - increased capacity, granularity, bandwidth, and RAS
A new I/O drawer and new form factor I/O cards are being introduced to support a direct Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Generation 2 (PCIe Gen2) infrastructure with increased capacity, granularity, and infrastructure bandwidth, as well as increased reliability, availability, and serviceability. New hardware features are being introduced for the local area network to support PCIe Gen2 - the OSA-Express4S features.

Capacity: With their compact design, two PCIe I/O drawers occupy the same space as one I/O cage while delivering 14% more capacity - up to 128 channels (64 I/O cards) are supported versus the 112 channels (28 I/O cards) offered with the I/O cage.

Granularity: With the PCIe I/O drawer we are introducing enhanced granularity features for the local area network (LAN).

• The OSA-Express4S 10 GbE features for multimode (SR) and single mode fiber optic environments (LR) have one port per feature and one CHPID.
• The OSA-Express4S GbE features for multimode (SX) and single mode fiber optic environments (LX) have two ports per feature and one CHPID shared by the two ports.

Increased infrastructure bandwidth: The new I/O infrastructure introduces the industry-standard Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Generation 2 (PCIe Gen2) infrastructure from the processor book to the I/O cards, which now supports an 8 gigabytes per second (8 GBps) bus. This new infrastructure offers enhanced bandwidth in the connection to the processor book as well as the distribution buses contained in the drawer.

Reliability, Availability, Serviceability: The PCIe I/O drawer is designed with symmetrical, redundant cooling across all I/O cards and power supplies for improved RAS. Dual PCIe paths to the system processors from an I/O card provide enhanced resiliency. Also included are temperature monitoring of critical ASICs to optimize cooling and reliability.

HiperSockets for virtual LANs between logical partitions within a zEnterprise 196 and zEnterprise 114

The HiperSockets function, also known as internal queued direct input/output (internal QDIO or iQDIO), is an integrated function of the z196 and z114 that provides users with attachments to up to 32 high-speed virtual LANs and is designed to minimize system and network overhead.

HiperSockets can be customized to accommodate varying traffic sizes. Because HiperSockets does not use an external network, it can free up system and network resources, helping to eliminate attachment costs while improving availability and performance.

HiperSockets eliminates the necessity of using I/O subsystem operations and traversing an external network connection to communicate between logical partitions in the same System z server. HiperSockets offers significant value in server consolidation by connecting many virtual servers, and can be used instead of certain coupling link configurations in a Parallel Sysplex environment.

HiperSockets internal networks on z196 and z114 servers support two transport modes:

• Layer 2 (link layer)
• Layer 3 (network or IP layer)

Traffic can be IPv4 or IPv6, or non-IP such as AppleTalk, DECnet, IPX, NetBIOS, or SNA.

For more information on the Open Systems Adapter features and HiperSockets, refer to the IBM System z Connectivity Handbook, SG24-5444, which can be found at the following website: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/