The FICON/zHPF and fibre-channel CHA features are available in shortwave (multimode) and
longwave (single-mode) versions.
• FICON/zHPF: The same FICON CHAs are used for FICON and FICON/zHPF. The FICON
CHAs provide data transfer speeds of up to 800 MB/sec (8 Gbps) and have 16 ports per
feature (pair of boards). The CHPID must be set as the FC type in the hardware configuration
definition.
FICON data transmission rates vary according to configuration:
◦ S/390 Parallel Enterprise Servers - Generation 5 (G5) and Generation 6 (G6) only support
FICON at 1 Gbps.
◦ z800 and z900 series hosts have the following possible configurations:
FICON channel will operate at 1 Gbps only.–
– FICON EXPRESS channel transmission rates will vary according to microcode release.
If microcode is 3G or later, the channel will auto-negotiate to set a 1 Gbps or 2-Gbps
transmission rate. If microcode is previous to 3G, the channel will operate at 1 Gbps
only.
◦ z9 and z10 series hosts have the following possible configurations:
FICON channel will operate at 1/2/4 Gbps (by auto-negotiation process).–
– FICON EXPRESS8 is supported in z9/z10 series.
– FICON channel will auto-negotiate to set a 1 or 2 or 4 Gbps transmission rate.
◦ z10 series and z196 hosts support:
FICON Express8–
– FICON channel auto-negotiates to set a 2, 4, or 8 Gbps transmission rate.
When configured with shortwave (multimode) FICON CHAs, the storage system can be located
according to the following:
◦ Multimode 62.5 um cable: 300m (1 Gbps), 150m (2 Gbps), 75m (4 Gbps)
◦ Multimode 50 um cable: 500m (1 Gbps), 300m (2 Gbps), 150m (4 Gbps)
When configured with longwave (single-mode) FICON CHAs, the storage system can be
located according to the following:
◦ Single-mode 9 um cable: 10km, 20km with RPQ
• Fibre Channel: Fiber-channel connectivity is supported for IBM mainframe attachment when
host FICON/zHPF channel paths are defined to operate in FCP mode. The fibre-channel CHAs
provide data transfer speeds of up to 8 Gbps and can have either 8 or 16 ports per CHA
pair (pair of boards). The storage system supports shortwave (multimode) and longwave
(single-mode) versions of fibre-channel ports on the same CHA.
Program products for mainframe
The following tables list and describe the Remote Web Console-based products and the host- and
server-based products for use with mainframe systems.
6 Overview of mainframe operations