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Cisco MDS 9000 Family Fabric Manager Configuration Guide
OL-17256-03, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.x
Chapter 36 Configuring FICON
FICON Tape Acceleration
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:
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