Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
That's how we sold a company I was with on the need for DR years ago. Headquarters overlooked the west end of the south runway of Miami International Airport. We used a graphic of the building and then another one with a planes tail sticking out. That's all it took. Alan Schwartz -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Chicklon, Thomas Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 12:33 PM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions Years ago, at an employer far, far away, we used to perform our disaster recovery tests in Chicago. From the parking lot on those late nights, I remember watching the string of airplanes overhead lining up to land at O'Hare. At first, it was just in amazement at how many planes there were in that seemingly never ending line. Then I wondered, is a recover center on the landing path to O'Hare really a good idea... Tom Chicklon -- Ted, One place I worked was at the edge of Ohare field. I have no idea what they were thinking outside of the fact that the could get tapes in and out of the city quickly. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html This e-mail transmission contains information that is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended only for the addressee(s) named above. If you receive this e-mail in error, please do not read, copy or disseminate it in any manner. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. Please reply to the message immediately by informing the sender that the message was misdirected. After replying, please erase it from your computer system. Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Years ago, at an employer far, far away, we used to perform our disaster recovery tests in Chicago. From the parking lot on those late nights, I remember watching the string of airplanes overhead lining up to land at O'Hare. At first, it was just in amazement at how many planes there were in that seemingly never ending line. Then I wondered, is a recover center on the landing path to O'Hare really a good idea... Tom Chicklon -- Ted, One place I worked was at the edge of Ohare field. I have no idea what they were thinking outside of the fact that the could get tapes in and out of the city quickly. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html This e-mail transmission contains information that is confidential and may be privileged. It is intended only for the addressee(s) named above. If you receive this e-mail in error, please do not read, copy or disseminate it in any manner. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. Please reply to the message immediately by informing the sender that the message was misdirected. After replying, please erase it from your computer system. Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
And I visited a DR site once which was also located very near O'Hare Airport. They could get their customers, who had just suffered a disaster, into their DR site very quickly. But they were also located in an area where air disasters are much more likely than elsewhere. However, there is a lot of land near airports available for non-residential purposes and the rent is low. Bill Fairchild Rocket Software -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Gould Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 12:14 PM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions Ted, One place I worked was at the edge of Ohare field. I have no idea what they were thinking outside of the fact that the could get tapes in and out of the city quickly. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Ted, One place I worked was at the edge of Ohare field. I have no idea what they were thinking outside of the fact that the could get tapes in and out of the city quickly. Ed -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
>Seriously: A datacenter location should be planned carefully and the most >important factor is natural and "human" (like airport) threat existence. After September 2001, we know that. But, the first data centre I worked at was within 2km of Pearson International (Toronto) Airport, in 1981. - Ted MacNEIL eamacn...@yahoo.ca Twitter: @TedMacNEIL -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Radoslaw Skorupka wrote: >BTW: It seems the earthquake is limiting factor for you, why don't you get rid of the earthquakes? We don't use earthquakes at all... Thanks for shaking us with this shaking news! :-D >BTW2: I live on watershed. We don't have rivers, lakes, floods, mines, earthquakes, tornados, airports in the neighborhood, even terrorists. The most dangerous natural threats are pickpockets and burglars. I have some enlighting news for you: Sunrays are also dangerous! :-D ;-D Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Skip, As I wrote the distance and the treffic type decides whether ESCON is applicable or not. In your case - 100km, remote CU - it's not. BTW: It seems the earthquake is limiting factor for you, why don't you get rid of the earthquakes? We don't use earthquakes at all... BTW2: I live on watershed. We don't have rivers, lakes, floods, mines, earthquakes, tornados, airports in the neighborhood, even terrorists. The most dangerous natural threats are pickpockets and burglars. Seriously: A datacenter location should be planned carefully and the most important factor is natural and "human" (like airport) threat existence. Regards -- Radoslaw Skorupka Lodz, Poland W dniu 2011-06-23 22:58, Skip Robinson pisze: Radoslaw, I'm sure that your experience was perfectly valid for your geography. I've heard that it's fairly common in Europe to rely on a recovery site that lies only a few KM from the primary site. 'Across the river and through the woods.' (Woods optional) In the U.S., recovery distances are almost always much greater. Along the West Coast, for example, the biggest threat to an IT environment is earthquake. You have to reach pretty far to find a site that won't go down in the same seismic event. At distances of 100 KM, ESCON over DWDM is a dog because it's a synchronous protocol: each STARTIO has to get a positive response before the next operation can proceed. With every KM, the round trip time increases. As you mentioned, conventional channel extenders (CCE here) mitigate the delay by spoofing both the computer on one end and the device on the other end. CCE allows ESCON to pump data faster than it could if it actually had to wait for a real response to every operation. FICON is designed to ship a boatload of data in one burst before requiring a response, which can be returned even as data is going the other direction. Hence DWDM fiber can be (more) fully utilized. Data flies. This anecdote illustrates the performance improvement we saw. All of our tape drives at both centers are accessible to all systems at both sites. 'Local' or 'remote' tape is selected by esoteric name. For many years we ran ESCON tape with CCE. Users were accustomed to a remote tape taking longer to process than a local tape. Shortly after we converted remote tape from CCE to FICON/DWDM, we received a 'problem call' from a user who was certain that his job had somehow allocated a local tape drive instead of the intended remote tape. Elapsed time was too short for the job to have run correctly! Incidentally, our original motivation for moving from CCE to DWDM was cost. The performance boost was icing on the (cheaper) cake. . . JO.Skip Robinson -- Tre tej wiadomoci moe zawiera informacje prawnie chronione Banku przeznaczone wycznie do uytku subowego adresata. Odbiorc moe by jedynie jej adresat z wyczeniem dostpu osób trzecich. Jeeli nie jeste adresatem niniejszej wiadomoci lub pracownikiem upowanionym do jej przekazania adresatowi, informujemy, e jej rozpowszechnianie, kopiowanie, rozprowadzanie lub inne dziaanie o podobnym charakterze jest prawnie zabronione i moe by karalne. Jeeli otrzymae t wiadomo omykowo, prosimy niezwocznie zawiadomi nadawc wysyajc odpowied oraz trwale usun t wiadomo wczajc w to wszelkie jej kopie wydrukowane lub zapisane na dysku. This e-mail may contain legally privileged information of the Bank and is intended solely for business use of the addressee. This e-mail may only be received by the addressee and may not be disclosed to any third parties. If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail or the employee authorised to forward it to the addressee, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution or any other similar activity is legally prohibited and may be punishable. If you received this e-mail by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software and delete permanently this e-mail including any copies of it either printed or saved to hard drive. BRE Bank SA, 00-950 Warszawa, ul. Senatorska 18, tel. +48 (22) 829 00 00, fax +48 (22) 829 00 33, e-mail: i...@brebank.pl Sd Rejonowy dla m. st. Warszawy XII Wydzia Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sdowego, nr rejestru przedsibiorców KRS 025237, NIP: 526-021-50-88. Wedug stanu na dzie 01.01.2011 r. kapita zakadowy BRE Banku SA (w caoci wpacony) wynosi 168.346.696 zotych. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Radoslaw,
I'm sure that your experience was perfectly valid for your geography. I've
heard that it's fairly common in Europe to rely on a recovery site that
lies only a few KM from the primary site. 'Across the river and through
the woods.' (Woods optional) In the U.S., recovery distances are almost
always much greater. Along the West Coast, for example, the biggest threat
to an IT environment is earthquake. You have to reach pretty far to find a
site that won't go down in the same seismic event.
At distances of 100 KM, ESCON over DWDM is a dog because it's a
synchronous protocol: each STARTIO has to get a positive response before
the next operation can proceed. With every KM, the round trip time
increases. As you mentioned, conventional channel extenders (CCE here)
mitigate the delay by spoofing both the computer on one end and the device
on the other end. CCE allows ESCON to pump data faster than it could if it
actually had to wait for a real response to every operation.
FICON is designed to ship a boatload of data in one burst before requiring
a response, which can be returned even as data is going the other
direction. Hence DWDM fiber can be (more) fully utilized. Data flies.
This anecdote illustrates the performance improvement we saw. All of our
tape drives at both centers are accessible to all systems at both sites.
'Local' or 'remote' tape is selected by esoteric name. For many years we
ran ESCON tape with CCE. Users were accustomed to a remote tape taking
longer to process than a local tape. Shortly after we converted remote
tape from CCE to FICON/DWDM, we received a 'problem call' from a user who
was certain that his job had somehow allocated a local tape drive instead
of the intended remote tape. Elapsed time was too short for the job to
have run correctly!
Incidentally, our original motivation for moving from CCE to DWDM was
cost. The performance boost was icing on the (cheaper) cake.
.
.
JO.Skip Robinson
SCE Infrastructure Technology Services
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
626-302-7535 Office
323-715-0595 Mobile
jo.skip.robin...@sce.com
From: "R.S."
To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu
Date: 06/23/2011 04:38 AM
Subject:Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List
W dniu 2011-06-22 22:47, Skip Robinson pisze:
> We run FICON DASD and tape connections between data centers over DWDM
> ('dark fiber'). Network distance is about 120 KM. The primary purpose
for
> DASD is mirroring for DR; tape is used the same as local tape. It all
> works great.
>
> DO NOT attempt to run ESCON over DWDM. We tried that early on.
Performance
> was unacceptable.
DO NOT attempt to believe the above without further assumpions about
traffic type and distance.
We tried, AND WE USED ESCON over DWDM and performance was really
acceptable. More: when we moved from ESCON to FICON performance was
almost unchanged. Details: distance of few kilometers (approx 10 km),
*synchronous* remote copy. For asynchronous remote copy the distance can
be virtually unlimited. We also used remote tapes on shorter (single
km's) distance. Also without any performance problems.
As far as I understand original post there is a need to connect remote
CU's to the host. In such case DWDM is the option, but the devil is in
the details. Some clues:
1. ESCON performance depends on the distance, depends strongly. You can
connect any CU, but in some cases you shouldn't expect miracles. IMHO
tapes on extended distance work reasonably, better than DASD. For
greater distances there are (were) magic boxes called channel extenders.
Contrary to DWDM such extender plays (cheats!) with ESCON protocol and
that improves performance.
2. FICON performance can suffer on bigger distances, one of the methods
to relieve it is to use FICON switches (directors) on both ends. Such a
director, with proper licensed feature can have increased number of BB
credits (more buffers). There are also features similar to "channel
extender".
3. DWDM, switches, their features are quite expensive! Do you really
have a budget for such drills?
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
P.S. Skip, maybe the above sounds offensive, but it's not my intention
to offend anyone.
--
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Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
W dniu 2011-06-22 22:47, Skip Robinson pisze:
We run FICON DASD and tape connections between data centers over DWDM
('dark fiber'). Network distance is about 120 KM. The primary purpose for
DASD is mirroring for DR; tape is used the same as local tape. It all
works great.
DO NOT attempt to run ESCON over DWDM. We tried that early on. Performance
was unacceptable.
DO NOT attempt to believe the above without further assumpions about
traffic type and distance.
We tried, AND WE USED ESCON over DWDM and performance was really
acceptable. More: when we moved from ESCON to FICON performance was
almost unchanged. Details: distance of few kilometers (approx 10 km),
*synchronous* remote copy. For asynchronous remote copy the distance can
be virtually unlimited. We also used remote tapes on shorter (single
km's) distance. Also without any performance problems.
As far as I understand original post there is a need to connect remote
CU's to the host. In such case DWDM is the option, but the devil is in
the details. Some clues:
1. ESCON performance depends on the distance, depends strongly. You can
connect any CU, but in some cases you shouldn't expect miracles. IMHO
tapes on extended distance work reasonably, better than DASD. For
greater distances there are (were) magic boxes called channel extenders.
Contrary to DWDM such extender plays (cheats!) with ESCON protocol and
that improves performance.
2. FICON performance can suffer on bigger distances, one of the methods
to relieve it is to use FICON switches (directors) on both ends. Such a
director, with proper licensed feature can have increased number of BB
credits (more buffers). There are also features similar to "channel
extender".
3. DWDM, switches, their features are quite expensive! Do you really
have a budget for such drills?
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
P.S. Skip, maybe the above sounds offensive, but it's not my intention
to offend anyone.
--
Tre tej wiadomoci moe zawiera informacje prawnie chronione Banku
przeznaczone wycznie do uytku subowego adresata. Odbiorc moe by jedynie
jej adresat z wyczeniem dostpu osób trzecich. Jeeli nie jeste adresatem
niniejszej wiadomoci lub pracownikiem upowanionym do jej przekazania
adresatowi, informujemy, e jej rozpowszechnianie, kopiowanie, rozprowadzanie
lub inne dziaanie o podobnym charakterze jest prawnie zabronione i moe by
karalne. Jeeli otrzymae t wiadomo omykowo, prosimy niezwocznie
zawiadomi nadawc wysyajc odpowied oraz trwale usun t wiadomo
wczajc w to wszelkie jej kopie wydrukowane lub zapisane na dysku.
This e-mail may contain legally privileged information of the Bank and is intended solely for business use of the addressee. This e-mail may only be received by the addressee and may not be disclosed to any third parties. If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail or the employee authorised to forward it to the addressee, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution or any other similar activity is legally prohibited and may be punishable. If you received this e-mail by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software and delete permanently this e-mail including any copies of it either printed or saved to hard drive.
BRE Bank SA, 00-950 Warszawa, ul. Senatorska 18, tel. +48 (22) 829 00 00, fax
+48 (22) 829 00 33, e-mail: i...@brebank.pl
Sd Rejonowy dla m. st. Warszawy XII Wydzia Gospodarczy Krajowego Rejestru Sdowego, nr rejestru przedsibiorców KRS 025237, NIP: 526-021-50-88.
Wedug stanu na dzie 01.01.2011 r. kapita zakadowy BRE Banku SA (w caoci wpacony) wynosi 168.346.696 zotych.
--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
We run FICON DASD and tape connections between data centers over DWDM
('dark fiber'). Network distance is about 120 KM. The primary purpose for
DASD is mirroring for DR; tape is used the same as local tape. It all
works great.
DO NOT attempt to run ESCON over DWDM. We tried that early on. Performance
was unacceptable.
Before we had FICON, we used a 'conventional' channel extender, which
worked reasonable well with ESCON. FICON/DWDM is the way to go.
.
.
JO.Skip Robinson
SCE Infrastructure Technology Services
Electric Dragon Team Paddler
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
626-302-7535 Office
323-715-0595 Mobile
jo.skip.robin...@sce.com
From: "Klein, Kevin"
To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu
Date: 06/22/2011 12:54 PM
Subject:Escon and Ficon Extensions
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List
My company is currently running from our hotsite after declaring and
executing a disaster at our primary site (too close to the Missouri River
this summer). We're looking for alternate sites to move our primary site
to that are closer to home. I guess we were kind of in denial that we'd
ever declare a disaster and never really planned for coming back from the
hotsite. It's amazing what comes up in an actual disaster that never made
it into our semi-annual tests.
Anyway, the purpose of this email is to ask if there is any way to extend
both Escon and ficon channels out of whatever turns out to be our computer
room? We have some candidates to move back to, but would prefer to run
them dark and put our tape drives and operators in another room or
building. We have a 2098 CPU and both 3490 Escon and 3590 ficon tape
drives. I probably left out a lot of needed details but would appreciate
any responses. If there's no way to extend these channels, does anyone
know off the top of their head how long the channel cables can be? Thanks
in advance.
--
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Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
http://www.opticatech.com/?page_id=49 3KM native, 16KM with a FICON Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESCON http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FICON On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Klein, Kevin wrote: > My company is currently running from our hotsite after declaring and > executing a disaster at our primary site (too close to the Missouri River > this summer). We're looking for alternate sites to move our primary site to > that are closer to home. I guess we were kind of in denial that we'd ever > declare a disaster and never really planned for coming back from the hotsite. > It's amazing what comes up in an actual disaster that never made it into our > semi-annual tests. > > Anyway, the purpose of this email is to ask if there is any way to extend > both Escon and ficon channels out of whatever turns out to be our computer > room? We have some candidates to move back to, but would prefer to run them > dark and put our tape drives and operators in another room or building. We > have a 2098 CPU and both 3490 Escon and 3590 ficon tape drives. I probably > left out a lot of needed details but would appreciate any responses. If > there's no way to extend these channels, does anyone know off the top of > their head how long the channel cables can be? Thanks in advance. > > > Attention: > The information contained in this message and or attachments is intended only > for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain > confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, > dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this > information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is > prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and > delete the material from any system and destroy any copies. (GWCC) > > > -- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: Escon and Ficon Extensions
Not sure what distances you are considering, but the System z Connectivity Handbook (SG24-5444) has a chapter on unrepeated and repeated distance solutions for various connections to include ESCON and FICON. Regards, Kevin -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Klein, Kevin Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 12:53 PM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Escon and Ficon Extensions My company is currently running from our hotsite after declaring and executing a disaster at our primary site (too close to the Missouri River this summer). We're looking for alternate sites to move our primary site to that are closer to home. I guess we were kind of in denial that we'd ever declare a disaster and never really planned for coming back from the hotsite. It's amazing what comes up in an actual disaster that never made it into our semi-annual tests. Anyway, the purpose of this email is to ask if there is any way to extend both Escon and ficon channels out of whatever turns out to be our computer room? We have some candidates to move back to, but would prefer to run them dark and put our tape drives and operators in another room or building. We have a 2098 CPU and both 3490 Escon and 3590 ficon tape drives. I probably left out a lot of needed details but would appreciate any responses. If there's no way to extend these channels, does anyone know off the top of their head how long the channel cables can be? Thanks in advance. Attention: The information contained in this message and or attachments is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any system and destroy any copies. (GWCC) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
