- An EPS Seminar -
Dates and Location:
None scheduled at this time. Available for in-house instruction.
Hardcopy of Abstract and Outline:
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Seminar abstract and Outline
Audience:
This two-and-a-half-day seminar is intended for system programmers, hardware planners and support personnel, senior operations personnel and technical managers who require a knowledge of FICON concepts, terminology and facilities, including the planning, configuring and integrating of FICON-capable devices.
Seminar Instructor:
Phil Riley
Seminar Abstract:
The seminar presents a general knowledge of FICON concepts including physical cable structure and connectivity options, methodology of light transference and light loss calculations for a given link. Fibre Channel standard architecture is discussed, together with initialization processes that take place when a link is activated.
FICON configuration concepts using both I/O Configuration Program (IOCP) and Hardware Configuration Definition (HCD) are covered. This includes FICON extended distance and CTC connectivity issues.
Students are given an overview of current FICON switches and directors, together with descriptions of how these devices may be integrated, including the concept of director cascading. The configuring of an associated switch port matrix using HCD and other interfaces is included.
Recognition of problems on a FICON link is clearly important and students are given an overview of error handling within the FICON environment. Console messages and LOGREC records detailing such errors are discussed.
Lecture material is reinforced with the use of lab exercises. Students have a choice of using either IOCP or HCD interfaces for the configuration labs.
Prerequisites:
Students attending this seminar will benefit from a prior knowledge of IOCP coding and/or HCD configuration methodology. Knowledge of hardware components will also be useful.
Seminar Objectives:
In this seminar, students will learn how to:
- Calculate the Link Loss Budget for both multimode and single mode fiber links
- Perform effective cabling in a fiber intensive configuration
- Configure ESCON and FICON directors with chpid and control unit connectivity
- Migrate one or more ESCON chpids to a single FICON chpid
- Use a FICON Bridge card during ESCON to FICON migration
- Use IOCP and HCD to configure FICON channel-to-channel adapters
- Use IOCP and HCD to perform device partitioning across logical partitions
- Create a switch port matrix using HCD
- Use ESCON Manager (ESCM) or System Automation I/O Operations to control a configuration's switching capabilities
- Identify an error on a fiber link from console messages and/or SYS1.LOGREC records
Seminar Outline:
The following is a high level outline for this seminar:
- Physical Fiber
- Fiber modes
- Jumper and trunk cables
- Mode conditioner patch cables
- Fiber optic connectors, couplers and adapters
- Light sources and transmission modes
- Reasons for light loss
- Link loss budget calculations
- FICON Connectivity
- FICON vs. ESCON
- FICON Express and Express 2
- Cascaded FICON directors
- Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing
- Sysplex Timer
- GDPS/PPRC and GDPS/XRC
- FICON Bridge
- FICON CTC links
- ESCON to FICON migration considerations
- FICON Architecture
- Fibre Channel protocols
- Port identifiers and World Wide Names
- Well known addresses
- FICON serial frame addressing
- Link initialization, Fabric and Port Login
- Logical pathing
- Fibre Channel frame structures
- Frame flow control
- CCW pipelining and IU pacing
- FICON Hardware
- Director control unit port
- Zoning and Binding
- Insistent domain ids
- 9032-5 ESCON/FICON director
- CNT directors and switches
- McData directors and switches
- Brocade directors and switches
- Cisco Systems directors and switches
- IBM TotalStorage
- Optical Technologies 'PRIZM'
- FICON Configuration
- CHPID parameters for IOCP and HCD
- CNTLUNIT parameters for IOCP and HCD
- IODEVICE parameters for IOCP and HCD
- Defining director using IOCP and HCD
- SWITCH statement and HCD extended migration
- ESCON CTC connectivity options
- FICON CTC connectivity options
- Switch Port Matrix Configuration
- Switch configuration terms
- 9032-5 director matrix control
- CNT FICON director matrix control
- ESCON Manager (ESCM) and System Automation I/O Ops
- ESCM and I/O Ops console commands
- Using HCD as a matrix manager
- ESCON/FICON Problem Determination
- Failure reporting via console messages
- Link Incident failure scenario
- LOGREC failure reporting
- Link error status blocks (LESBs)
- Associated use of ESCM, I/O Ops and console messages
