We currently have an IBM DS6800 ficon attached to an IBM z/890. I started to wonder, what it would take to upgrade things to support a small SAN for zLinux.
The DS6800 doesn't have LPAR capability, but I can physically partition it (in units of a 4 pack of drives). That seems to be part of the box as shipped. It seems that the ficon ports/cables are the same as fcp ports/cables, it just matters how you configure them. The port/cable configuration seems to also be an option on the z/890. So, it seems, that if I have the resources available, I could define one or more ports on the z/890 to be FCP, tell the DS6800 that these ports are FCP, dedicate a four pack of drives for SAN, and now I have a small "sand box" to play with. Is any of that, true? I was expecting to have to buy FCP cards and pay for DS6800 upgrades. And later, for performance and capacity, I will need to. It would be a shame to have everything thing there, and not use it, just because I didn't ask a question. Currently I have a 16 drive base unit, and 48 drives on three expansion units. All of this under 8 arrays, with a Logical Control Unit for each array. I assume that the dedicated disk space should be in units of one or more arrays, with the smallest array being four drives. So I might have to move things around in order to free up an array, but flash copy makes that fairly easy. The manuals and Redbooks talk about Open Systems dasd during the install process, but not partitioning an active box that has some available resources. Thanks Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting Law of Cat Obstruction A cat must lay on the floor in such a position to obstruct the maximum amount of human foot traffic.
