HP Cisco MDS 9216A Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide - - Page 783

Chapter 36 Configuring FICON FICON Tape Acceleration Send documentation comments to [email protected] Swapping Ports To swap ports using Device Manager, follow these steps: Step 1 Select two Fibre Channel ports by holding down the CTRL key and clicking them. Step 2 Choose FICON > Swap Selected Ports (see Figure 36-19). Figure 36-19 FICON Swap Selected Ports FICON Tape Acceleration The sequential nature of tape devices causes each I/O operation to the tape device over an FCIP link to incur the latency of the FCIP link. Throughput drastically decreases as the round-trip time through the FCIP link increases, leading to longer backup windows. Also, after each I/O operation, the tape device is idle until the next I/O arrives. Starting and stopping of the tape head reduces the lifespan of the tape, except when I/O operations are directed to a virtual tape. Cisco MDS NX-OS software provides acceleration for the following FICON tape write operations: • The link between mainframe and native tape drives (both IBM and Sun/STK) • The back-end link between the VSM (Virtual Storage Management) and tape drive (Sun/STK) FICON tape acceleration over FCIP provides the following advantages: • Efficiently utilizes the tape device by decreasing idle time • More sustained throughput as latency increases • Similar to FCP tape acceleration, and does not conflict with it Note FICON tape read acceleration over FCIP is not supported. Figure 36-20 through Figure 36-23 show supported configurations: OL-17256-03, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.x Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide 36-33