When we ordered our z/890 and Shark (which turned into a DS6800 somewhere during the shipment<G>)...
I looked at FCP and just couldn't deal with it. It seem... A ficon adapter was $25k. A FCP adapter was $25k. You would need one (or two) FCP adapters for Linux. You would need one (or two) Ficon adapters for VSE. VM could use either one. (we were very much in a cost containment mode) When VM emulated CKD on FCP, we could use the normal VM type products. But when z/Linux was using native FCP, VM and it's products were out of the picture. I'm not sure if this would have been a good thing or not. The backup/recovery method may turn out just to be too different to force the z/Linux side into the traditional mainframe mode. The DS6800 can be partitioned into CKD and SAN sides. The SAN side can be accessed as a normal SAN to the network or to the mainframe over FCP. But with partitioning the box, I have concerns on the increments that can be moved on each side and how disruptive it is. With all CKD, I can assign volumes in 1 GB increments, and with VM, on a cylinder basis as everything is on the same side. The DS6800 can support, in CKD mode a 3390 model 54. So we also have very large dasd support in either Ficon or FCP connections. VM supports PAV for z/Linux guests. Extra charge for PAV support on the DS6800. But the DS6800 has 32 virtual controllers available, each with 256 addresses. I'm not sure that I'm going to run out of addresses anytime soon. Perhaps the next box replacement will need PAV. I would think that native FCP would end up with slightly better thruput then FICON. With CKD support in z/Linux, there is a device driver that converts native Linux dasd commands to CKD. That is overhead. That is cpu time. Without it, I should get slightly better thruput. In my shop, the possible improvements isn't a driving factor, for now. And, if I prove my self wrong and native FCP support is great, I can always add it later. Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/22/05 12:03 PM >>> Good Afternoon.. I am new to this list. We are a medium sized VM / VSE shop planning to implement Linux running mainly Webshpere applications on our Z890. I am attempting to lay out the architecture for this implementation. My question is what are the pro's and con's of accessing scsi via an FCP connection to a San vs. using 3390 storage. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
