“The process of establishing an all-FICON channel architecture on System z that supports a mix of FICON, ESCON, and Bus/Tag devices and applications as dictated by the customer’s specific business requirements.”
Realizing the full value of a z10 investment requires an evolution in the infrastructure supporting your new mainframe. Moving from older Bus & Tag and ESCON infrastructures to the latest FICON technology should occur in a highly controlled, managed process. Modern mainframes like the recently announced IBM System z10 offer unprecedented processing power, performance, scalability, and energy efficiency. To realize the full value of your modern mainframe investments, you must also modernize your infrastructure. As a result, data center managers with a significant installed base of ESCON equipment face a meaningful challenge. It doesn’t make sense to purchase a new mainframe and select ESCON channel cards given that you will not be able to fully leverage the significant performance potential and scalability that you’ve paid for in the z10. So, how can you migrate to a pure FICON channel configuration, but still support your ESCON and parallel devices?
Managed Evolution (ME) is the process of strategically evolving your mainframe infrastructure by investing in the newest, feature-rich technology on the host, while maintaining a mixed portfolio of applications and device types based on business requirements. ME is a planned approach to modernizing ESCON and bus and tag devices by attaching them to the same homogeneous FICON infrastructure as native FICON devices.
Benefits of Modernization
Managed Evolution helps to unleash the full power of the System z host in the areas of I/O capacity, system performance, capacity management, and storage optimization. The System z10 provides significant benefits in three areas:
- Business resiliency and security: You can more easily manage risk enterprise-wide and protect your enterprise’s most valuable data assets.
- Costs and service delivery: Consolidation increases control over rising administration costs and exponential data growth.
- “Green” IT: Even while honoring your Service Level Agreements (SLAs), you can lower energy consumption and balance energy demands to help avoid high peak energy usage.
To take full advantage of these modernization benefits, the following mainframe planning realities will ultimately have to be considered and dealt with:
- System z host upgrades
- Growth in z/OS and Linux-based workload
- Advanced storage architectures such as virtual tape and data replication
- The new economies associated with the green data center
- ESCON-to-FICON migration.
Supporting a mixed FICON and ESCON channel environment on your mainframe can undermine some of the benefits associated with z10. Consequently, IT planners are seeking solutions that enable them to fully embrace the z10 while ensuring the gradual evolution of mission-critical applications that rely on mature ESCON and bus and tag peripheral devices.
As you introduce new applications and support business growth, you will be investing in System z host upgrades and FICON infrastructure. Managed Evolution for System z is the ideal solution to complement this investment because it delivers a flexible FICON infrastructure while preserving investments in mature ESCON and Bus & Tag devices. ME is an infrastructure-based simplification initiative that drives the following benefits:
- Accelerates z10 readiness and acceptance: Conditioning a host I/O environment to pure FICON before migrating to z10 simplifies the cutover process and reduces downtime.
- Maximizes z10 value: Populating a new z10 with FICON channel cards vs. ESCON cards provides maximum flexibility, performance, and investment protection. The single infrastructure type can now support all existing devices, regardless of the interface style, via fully integrated and supported technologies that IBM endorses.
- Leverages FICON management, performance, and distance capabilities: The technical advantages of FICON are well-documented. The value proposition for leveraging FICON channels in the host system is enhanced with the ability to leverage the advantages across your entire device portfolio, new and old.
- Simplifies cable plant and mainframe configuration planning and operations: Managing a single, consistent cable plant with fewer physical cables reduces complexity and streamlines connectivity planning. Mainframe configuration planning and operational aspects are greatly simplified with a single protocol.
- Avoids ESCON director support issues: ME provides a means for replacing aging ESCON directors that are approaching end of support status from IBM.
- Provides green benefits: System z consolidation and the migration to a pure FICON host infrastructure provide significant environmental benefits, including floor space efficiencies and substantially reduced maintenance, power, and cooling costs.