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First, I would highly recommend that you read the excellent article "Modernize mainframe storage" by David Braue in the February 2003 issue of Storage magazine.
There are advocates of keeping mainframe storage separate from open systems
storage, primarily due to management features for the mainframe side, and
performance/caching advantages to leaving the mainframe storage separate.
However, with FICON connectivity to tie the mainframe into the SAN
infrastructure, mainframe storage can be effectively consolidated with the
open systems storage infrastructure, with the primary advantage of being
able to get rid of aging, out-dated storage equipment and take advantage of
the cost savings of consolidation and unified storage management. There are
a number of excellent technologies out there. The successful implementation
of such depends upon configuration variables and your company's application,
backup, and performance requirements. In general, you'll find that this
approach gives you a performance advantage. The use of FICON can reduce the
cabling requirements significantly and provide a common connectivity
platform for both mainframe and open systems storage. (This allows both
types of servers to share tape libraries, mirror data locally and over
distance via fibre).
Another point to consider -- if you are looking at Linux on the mainframe,
you have the additional advantages of further connectivity options, greater
performance (by eliminating signaling overheads) and being able to take
advantage of upcoming technologies such as clustered file systems, which
allow for a more efficient utilization of storage by eliminating the need to
replicate data between z/VM nodes and non-mainframe cluster nodes.
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