On Friday, 03/26/2010 at 12:45 EDT, RPN01 <nix.rob...@mayo.edu> wrote: > Ah, but while that was true of a ?real? 3390, is that also now true of emulated > 3390?s which are split across varying numbers of essentially SCSI disks? A > single 3390 mod 27 might be split up over several 9 gig physical disks in order > to implement the emulation. Is the controller smart enough to be able to start > an I/O to each, even though the I/O?s were sent to the same 3390 address? > > The waters get muddier every day....
I'll agree with Mark that isn't very muddy at all. A "volume" has been an abstract concept for quite a while now; controllers can do whatever they want and it doesn't affect the rules for SSCH-style I/O. The controller's goal is to give Device End back to the channel as quickly as possible once the data is in a safe place (usually non-volatile cache) awaiting final disposition. PAV does not allow multiple I/Os to the same subchannel. Rather, it creates additional "alias" subchannels ("exposures" in ancient parlance) that map to the same volume. I/O to each subchannel follows the normal I/O rules: you can't start another one until the current one finishes. Very much like shared dasd on separate chpids, but done on a single chpid instead. For guests that understand PAV, you can dedicate the base and alias subchannels to the guest and it will discover and handle it. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott