IBM announcement : DS8870 enhancements

Here's another announcement from last week specifically for the DS8870, the latest generation of the DS8000 : ' IBM DS8870 delivers expanded connectivity and extends cloud enablement support with z Synergy for integration of z Systems and Storage systems (ZG15-0098)'.
Availability date is May 22, 2015 and all "announced features and functions are supported on the IBM System Storage® DS8000 series and require DS8000 LMC 7.7.50.xx.xx (bundle version 87.50.xxx.xx), or later".

Here's an overview of the new features :

16GFC FC/FICON connectivity:
DS8870 supports 16GFC FC/FICON connectivity with an optional four-port host adapter card. Model 961 supports four adapter card pairs and Model 96E supports four additional adapter card pairs, enabling a total of sixty-four 16GFC FC/FICON ports.

New and improved z Synergy features:

• FICON® Dynamic Routing: This feature supports Systems Business Class and Enterprise Class models and enables use of dynamic routing policies for cascaded directors in the SAN. Examples of dynamic routing policies include Brocade Exchange Based Routing (EBR) or Originator Exchange ID Load Balancing (OxID) across cascaded FICON Directors. The value of FICON Dynamic Routing is to help reduce cost by allowing Metro Mirror and FICON traffic to share the same set of ISLs. This can help reduce the number of ports required, fibers, and intercite bandwidth.
• Forward error correction (FEC): This feature helps to correct I/O errors and improve the reliability of 16 Gbs links, encouraging the adoption of faster link speeds. This feature also protects DS8870 Metro Mirror links connected to 16GFC host adapters and FCP links connected to switches that support standard FEC negotiation protocols.
• zHPF Extended Distance II: This feature delivers better zHPF large block write performance at longer distances (up to 100 Km) and improved FC fabric congestion management.
• Fabric Priority for FICON, zHPF, and FCP: z Workload Manager (zWLM) will assign a fabric I/O priority for every I/O operation executed by z/OS® thus extending the scope of management into the SAN. The DS8870 exploits fabric priority by propagating it to the Metro Mirror traffic generated for write requests and by echoing back the priority to get the value on read requests. Fabric priority complements the FICON Dynamic Routing feature by insuring the FICON traffic and the Metro Mirror traffic are managed to a consistent set of policies.
• Read Diagnostics Parameters (RDP) support: RDP enables new standard link services for obtaining diagnostic information including link speeds and power levels from FC end points and switch ports to aid in link fault isolation.

Heat Map Transfer for MGM environments:
With this release, heat map transfer supports MGM replication topology in addition to Metro Mirror/Global Copy/Global Mirror (MM/GC/GM) functions.

REST API:
This release includes support for monitoring, configuring, and controlling aspects of the DS8870 system configuration by use of an industry-standard REST API.

Performance monitoring:
The improved DS8000® Storage Management GUI provides system performance monitoring in real time. A storage administrator can view performance metrics from up to one week earlier down to one minute intervals in order to troubleshoot a wide variety of issues. Supported graphs include the following:

• I/O, bandwidth, caching, capacity, and power/temperature monitoring at a system level
• Back-end I/O, back-end bandwidth, and capacity monitoring at a pool level
• Front-end I/O and bandwidth monitoring at a pool level

Simplified encryption setup:
The improved DS8000 Storage Management GUI also provides simplified encryption setup and management through a simplified encryption paradigm matching other products. This enables a storage administrator to configure encryption within five minutes of finishing system setup.

2011Q4 IBM mainframe announcements

A lot of interesting mainframe news was announced this week. I'm going to give you a brief overview of the announcements before I go into more details in some following posts. You shouldn't expect those to arrive before next week as I'm off to the IBM briefing center at Montpellier for the rest of the week - attending the Oracle on System z event.

The eye-catcher is of course Windows on zBX, but there's really much more. I'll start by giving you the titles of the announcements, the links and some brief information. Just to tease you for what's coming !


IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS , V2.1 enables a new class of business intelligence and data warehousing workloads for the IBM System z platform (ZP11-0546)
IDAA (yes, we needed another acronym) is the successor of ISAOpt (euh, IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer). It is based on Netezza technology and it should deliver an even far better performance. For the rest, it is implemented as transparantly as ISAOpt for DB2 for z/OS applications. What I find a bit annoying here is that it is not integrated into the zBX and therefore it is not managed by the Unified Resource Manager.


IBM z/VSE V5.1 - 64-bit virtual for future workloads (ZP11-0560)
z/VSE 5.1 is designed to

• "Provide 64-bit virtual addressing for workload growth or new applications.
• Introduce an architectural level set (ALS) that requires IBM System z9 or later.
• Exploit innovative IBM zEnterprise technology.
• Exploit enhanced IBM System Storage options.
• Offer new networking functions for more connectivity options.
• Provide Connector enhancements for high availability".

zEnterprise further extends hybrid computing with support for Microsoft Windows and other enhancements (ZG11-0275)
zHPF enhancements, APIs for the Unified Resource Manager, GDPS improvements and a lot more. But of course focus will mainly be on "Microsoft™ Windows™ on select IBM BladeCenter® HX5 (7873) blades installed in the zBX".


IBM z/VM V6.2 - Accelerate the journey to smarter computing with multi-system virtualization and virtual server mobility (ZP11-0499)
This had been a statement of direction for some time. Well, here it is now : "Multi-system virtualization clustering technology allowing up to four z/VM instances to be clustered in a Single System Image (SSI)". This also implies "Live Guest Relocation to move Linux™ virtual servers without disruption to the business, helping to avoid planned outages"


IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for z/OS Media V6.3 and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition for z/OS Media V6.3 enable FICON attached device access for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 Server on AIX and Linux on System z (ZP11-0465)
I like this one as well. It took some time to deliver but it's finally there. Lots of customers were running TSM for z/OS and invested in FICON coupled tape or DASD solutions. But then it was announced that TSM V6 would no longer run on z/OS. So you had to convert to another platform that was not able to connect to your FICON attached equipment. So, this TSM for z/OS Media is the missing link between both. You can now migrate to V6 but you can still write your data via z/OS to your FICON attached equipment. The concept is also "designed to allow the tape volume and stored data that was previously inventoried by the Tivoli Storage Manager for z/OS V5.5 server remain accessible on the z/OS system by the Tivoli Storage Manager V6.3 server on AIX or Linux for System z without having to move the tape volume from the z/OS managed tape library".

New Statement of Directon on ESCON channels

I was following some courses last week and so I see I have some more catching up to do now. Here's a first interesting piece of news. If I remember correctly, IBM already had a statement of direction that the z196 would be the last server to offer ESCON. It wasn't clear about carrying forward ESCON channels to a next generation. This has now been clarified although it has been a bit hidden in the announcement on 'IBM WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50 for zEnterprise (ZG11-0019)'. Here's what it says :

IBM plans not to offer ESCON channels as an orderable feature on high-end System z servers that follow the z196 (machine type 2817). In addition, ESCON channels cannot be carried forward on an upgrade to such a follow-on server. This plan applies to channel path identifier (CHPID) types CNC, CTC, CVC, and CBY and to feature numbers 2323 and 2324. System z customers should continue migrating from ESCON to FICON. Alternate solutions are available for connectivity to ESCON devices.

I think this will not be a problem as most customers already switched to FICON. We saw some customers still taking them along as they upgraded to z10 but so far I haven't seen any customers still using ESCON on z196. Mind you, the text explicitely states 'high-end System z servers' and you know what I told you about (not) filling in the blanks in a previous post.

For those interested in the WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance, I should come back to this in a future post.

FICON Express8 Performance

In a previous post I pointed out the announcement of the new FICON Express8 cards. Now there's already a white paper on the performance. Here's a graph taken from that study :


You can find the entire white paper over here : 'IBM System z10 FICON Express8 Channel Performance Version 1'.

Thanks to Jan Tits from IBM Belgium for pointing this out to me.

FICON Express8 for System z10

I have another (Dutch) blog where I give people all kinds of tips on the use of computers. In my last post I advised people to stay away from their computers during their holidays. You can surely live without it and your mail won't be running away. Don't tell those other readers, but I'm not really able to stick to that myself. So, here I am, in the midst of my own holiday, blogging about mainframe announcements. Shame on me !

Well, today IBM announced FICON Express8 cards (ZG09-0480), mind you, only for System z10 EC and System z10 BC. A small summary :

• Link data rate of 8 gigabits per second (Gbps) with autonegotiation to 2 or 4 Gbps. So, as mentioned before, no more autonegotiation to 1 Gbps.
• Performance improvements when transferring small blocks of fixed size data (4k blocks)
• With FICON Express8 operating at 8 Gbps, performance improvements for large sequential I/O operations can help reduce the duration of your backup/copy operations
• High Performance FICON for System z supports multitrack operations

Take a good look at the prerequisites. You need System z10 for zHPF and you need appropriate levels of z/OS to support certain functions. You will also have to pay attention whether any additional feature codes are needed on e.g. the DS8000.

Planned availability

• July 31, 2009: New build systems and MES orders
• August 21, 2009: FICON support of System Storage DS8000 series for zHPF multitrack operations

Alongside this announcement, there's another one (Hardware withdrawal: Select IBM System z10 Features - ZG09-0270) announcing the withdrawal of FICON Express4 10KM LX, FICON Express4 SX and FICON Express4 4KM LX cards on the z10. As you see it's just the 4-port cards. The 2-port cards on the z10 BC remain available. This withdrawal is effective October 27, 2009.

ESCON will be phased out : FICON Converter

One of my very first posts, back in September 2006, was called FICON Converter and started out like this :

"We all know the good old ESCON converter, but there's already a FICON converter too. This converter is designed to 'protect' your ESCON investment. It is attached to the host via 1 or 2 Ficon channels. It converts the protocol for connectivity for multiple ESCON devices with a maximum of 12 outbound ports. It also gives you the opportunity to eliminate costly ESCON directors".

True, and this is becoming quite relevant now as IBM has made the statement of direction that in due time ESCON will be phased out. Time to move on, I guess. And if you think of converters, you think of Optica. So it's no surprise that their most recent newsletter is telling you more about the PRIZM FICON Converter. Apparently it has more flavours than it used to. We now have a choice between 1:4 (read 1 FICON Channel:4 outbound ESCON ports), 2:8 and 2:12. More details can be found in the data sheet and the tested device list. You also find a 'Qualification Testing of Optica PRIZM product' document on the IBM connectivity website.

A recap for those wo really want some pictures of it :
(Click on the pictures for a larger view in a new window)

Current situation


Replacement with FICON Director


Replacement without FICON Director

FICON Converter

We all know the good old ESCON converter, but there's already a FICON converter too. This converter is designed to 'protect' your ESCON investment. It is attached to the host via 1 or 2 Ficon channels. It converts the protocol for connectivity for multiple ESCON devices with a maximum of 12 outbound ports. It also gives you the opportunity to eliminate costly ESCON directors. Here's a graphical representation :












They are distributed (as far as I know now) by McData and OpticaTech. They have different names but I think it's exactly the same fabric with another label on it.
I'll come back to this when I've got more information on this.