Ficon Link Incident Reporting

FICON Link Incident Reporting is designed to allow an operating system image (without operating intervention) to register for link incident reports, which can improve the ability to capture data for link error analysis. The informa- tion can be displayed and is saved in the system log.

Serviceability Enhancements

Requests Node Identiﬁ cation Data (RNID) is designed to facilitate the resolution of ﬁ ber optic cabling problems. You can now request RNID data for a device attached to a native FICON channel.

Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity

OSA-Express3 – the newest family of LAN adapters

The third generation of Open Systems Adapter-Express (OSA-Express3) features have been introduced to help reduce latency and overhead, deliver double the port den- sity of OSA-Express2, and provide increased throughput

Choose the OSA-Express3 features that best meet your

business requirements.

To meet the demands of your applications, provide granu- larity, facilitate redundant paths, and satisfy your infrastruc- ture requirements, there are seven features from which to choose. In the 10 GbE environment, Short Reach (SR) is being offered for the ﬁ rst time.

Feature	Infrastructure	Ports per
		Feature

OSA-Express3 GbE LX	Single mode ﬁber	4
OSA-Express3 10 GbE LR	Single mode ﬁber	2
OSA-Express3 GbE SX	Multimode ﬁber	4
OSA-Express3 10 GbE SR	Multimode ﬁber	2
OSA-Express3-2P GbE SX	Multimode ﬁber	2
OSA-Express3 1000BASE-T	Copper	4
OSA-Express3-2P 1000BASE-T	Copper	2

Note that software PTFs or a new release may be required (depending on CHPID type) to support all ports.

OSA-Express3 for reduced latency and improved throughput

To help reduce latency, the OSA-Express3 features now have an Ethernet hardware data router; what was previ- ously done in ﬁ rmware (packet construction, inspection, and routing) is now performed in hardware. With direct memory access, packets ﬂ ow directly from host memory to the LAN without ﬁ rmware intervention. OSA-Express3 is also designed to help reduce the round-trip networking time between systems. Up to a 45% reduction in latency at the TCP/IP application layer has been measured.

The OSA-Express3 features are also designed to improve throughput for standard frames (1492 byte) and jumbo frames (8992 byte) to help satisfy the bandwidth require- ments of your applications. Up to a 4x improvement has been measured (compared to OSA-Express2).

The above statements are based on OSA-Express3 perfor- mance measurements performed in a laboratory environ- ment on a System z10 and do not represent actual ﬁ eld measurements. Results may vary.

Port density or granularity

The OSA-Express3 features have Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCI-E) adapters. The previous table identiﬁ es whether the feature has 2 or 4 ports for LAN con- nectivity. Select the density that best meets your business requirements. Doubling the port density on a single feature helps to reduce the number of I/O slots required for high- speed connectivity to the Local Area Network.

The OSA-Express3 10 GbE features support Long Reach (LR) using 9 micron single mode ﬁ ber optic cabling and Short Reach (SR) using 50 or 62.5 micron multimode

ﬁber optic cabling. The connector is new; it is now the small form factor, LC Duplex connector. Previously the SC Duplex connector was supported for LR. The LC Duplex connector is common with FICON, ISC-3, and OSA- Express2 Gigabit Ethernet LX and SX.