One of my managers told me that since you could make both ECKD (FICON)
and SCSI (FCP) connections to the same IBM Storage subsystem, z/Linux
should be able to read z/OS data off the z/OS volumes, without any
special formatting by z/OS. I asked IBM and they said it couldn't be
done - z/Linux cannot read z/OS data and vice-versa.

Is this correct?

If so, what would it take to make z/Linux able to read z/OS data
directly?  New drivers?  A new file system?  How hard would this be to
write?

I am aware that you can access z/OS data from z/Linux (or any Linux)
over the network via one of:

*       NFS mount
*       Samba mount
*       Co:Z Co-Processing Toolkit

That's not what I am looking for here.  Our objective is to lower z/OS
MIPS by moving workload to z/Linux.  A network "mount" would certainly
cost some z/OS MIPS.  Moving workload to z/Linux without moving data
would save money because IFLs cost less than standard engines and the
software cost of Linux is lower than that of z/OS.

Alan Ackerman
Alan (dot) Ackerman (at) Bank of America (dot) com

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