I've said it before,
and I shamelessly grab this opportunity to say it again:
FBA FBA FBA FBA ...
CD-ROM is FBA.
If you do not believe this, attach a .iso file (CD image)
from the OS/2 side of you Multiprise to the S/390 side as 3370.
It works. There is even plenty enough room at the start of the
ISO 9660 filesystem for some good ole mainframe IPL text.
CD-ROM could be bootable. I wish I had time to prove booting.
(I have done this myself with P/390 and been told that it works on MP.)
Since VM fully supports FBA DASD, it could be IPLed from CD-ROM.
Obviously, Linux booting from CD-ROM is no shocker. But MF Linux
can also boot from CD-ROM. (Not talking about OMA bootstrap.
We're talking about IPL from a 3370, not IPL from "tape".)
One of our production Linux instances here came from a
snap-shot of an early SuSE release that was installed on an old
P/390 from a CD image attached as a 3370 to the starter system.
IPLed from OMA tape, sure. But once that installation sys was up
YaST found a "reachable directory" on what-appeared-as 3370 disk.
It read directly from the CD image, not NFS, not FTP.
The P/390 is dead, but that Linux inst is alive and well.
But can I get 9336 from my DASD team? No. :-S
+ EMC, STK, and IBM should support FBA in addition to CKD
+ the customers should demand it
+ RedHat, SuSE, and IBM should cut a few IPLable CDs
+ SAN/SCSI should be attachable (by VM or the HW) as FBA
+ VM and Linux should both be bootable from SAN/SCSI
+ VM and Linux should have FBA starter systems on CD-ROM
(again, NOT just OMA form of CD-ROM)
Heck ... VSE could do this too. It has no problem with FBA.
MVS is the only place where FBA DASD never caught on, and that's
probably why the DASD vendors think there is no market.
But now along comes SAN. Hmmm...
The backing store for contemporary DASD subsystems is FBA.
When DASD vendors present FBA on the channel, they cut-out
an unnecessary middle of CKD emulation. Eliminating that middle
is especially useful to Linux which discards most of the CKD value.
SCSI (SAN) is FBA with fancier addressing than 3370 or 9336.
[Sir Santa now returns to the North Pole to cool down a bit.]
-- R;
