Does Channel Gateway X (CGX) support multipath FICON?
Yes. CGX supports multiple FICON paths within a Channel Gateway unit, providing failover and load balancing capabilities. In conjunction with error recovery on the mainframe, switch/directors, and CGX, failed or inactivated ports will allow the remaining FICON paths to continue processing withou ...
- Can other applications access the Channel Gateway data?
A: Yes, by configuring the Channel Gateway to unblock and translate the data, the virtual tape data will be available to other applications that have physical access to the storage device. The Channel Gateway provides unique capabilities to share data simultaneously between mainframes and open ...
- How much data is pre-allocated for each virtual tape?
A: No storage is reserved for a virtual tape. Unlike true tape, there is no wasted space on the storage device.
- Can multiple Channel Gateways access the same data?
A: Yes. If the storage allows access, such as NFS and clustered file system environments, all Channel Gateway servers can read and write the shared data. If the storage is SCSI or Fibre-Channel, additional software may be required to allow all Channel Gateway servers to access and share the same ...
- Where is the metadata for the tapes stored? Is there a database?
A: All metadata is stored with the tape data. A database is not required for any Luminex Mainframe Virtual Tape solution, but may be required for non-Luminex virtual tape libraries and physical tape library solutions.
- How many virtual tapes can be supported?
A: Channel Gateway imposes no limits on the number of tapes for disk-based storage applications. The limit is defined by the file system or storage device.
- How is end-of-tape handling performed?
A: A virtual tape can reach end-of-tape under the following conditions: The storage capacity has reached a minimum configured value; the maximum configured amount of data has been written to the tape; or the maximum number of blocks have been reached. If the storage device is true tape, the en ...
- Does the Channel Gateway support multiple datasets on a single virtual tape?
A: Yes.
- What is the storage capacity overhead introduced by the Channel Gateway?
A: The overhead is very small – usually in the range of .05% to .10% of the total storage capacity. The overhead is 8 bytes per tape block. Thus if you write a 10 Gbyte tape using a block size of 16K, the overhead is .05% and it shrinks to .02% if a 32K block size is used. The larger t ...
- What is the maximum block size?
A: 64 Kbytes for 3490 and 256 Kbytes for 3590.
- How many blocks can be written to a tape?
A: 4 million.
- How much data can be written to a virtual tape?
A: The theoretical limit is near 256 GBytes and is dependent on block size. Confirmation of existing customer OS levels, application levels, etc. needs to be determined to verify if the host and application environment can support the maximum levels.
- Can a mainframe be IPL’d from a Channel Gateway?
A: Yes. There is no difference between a 3490 tape drive and the Channel Gateway. The IPL tape must be logically mounted either through a command line interface on the server or through the Luminex browser interface.
- How does the Channel Gateway eject tapes?
A: For disk based storage, an eject (rewind/unload) is simply the process of making the virtual tape data no longer available. For true tape-based storage, an eject command is issued to the drive to unload the tape and if a tape library, the robot is instructed to return the cartridge within th ...
- Does the Channel Gateway support scratch pools?
A: Yes. The Channel Gateway supports one or more scratch pools. The pools are lists of volsers maintained in simple text files and each device address can have its own pool. Click here to go to the Scratch Management FAQs.
