Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
The S/390 Coupling Facility (CF), the key component of the Parallel Sysplex cluster, enables multisystem coordination and datasharing among OS/390 images in the cluster. It makes highperformance, multisystem data sharing possible, and provides high-speed locking, caching, and message list services between coupling-capable S/390 processors. It is a combination of hardware and licensed internal code. It is connected by Coupling Links, high-bandwidth fiber-optic cables, to OS/390 systems in a Parallel Sysplex. Coupling Links connect point-to-point between the Coupling Facility and all participating S/390 processors. This removes the need for Coupling Facility channels. CFs run Coupling Facility Control Code (CFCC), a special purpose Licensed Internal Code (LIC), to perform coupling operations. CFCC is the operating systemfor the CFs and provides the function that enables the Parallel Sysplex. "Sizing" a CF involves estimating the number of processors and the amount of storage needed on the CF. It also includes estimating the number of CF links that will be needed. "Tuning" the CF is performed to ensure that sufficient quantities of the various resources needed by exploiters of the coupling technology have been allocated. Observation of the storage allocated and utilized by structures, the response times and request rates, and the processor utilization , is required both to determine bottlenecks and to balance storage, and the number of processors, and the number of CF links to optimally use the coupling technology. Basic Sysplex support is provided by the cross-system Coupling Facility (XCF) of OS/390. This allows authorized applications (such as IBM transaction, communications and database managers) to efficiently share information with subsystems on other servers in the complex. It ensures that resource serialization and cached buffer integrity are maintained. Serialization is required to control access and updates to data, and to ensure that only one application can change data at a time. Buffer integrity is necessary to ensure that changes are reflected in all memory resident copies of the data. Coupling Facilities provide a common memory for the Parallel Sysplex that is dynamically partitioned into lock, cache and list structures. These structures are typically used to hold status information required for inter-system coherency and provide a serialization mechanism for multiple systems. In addition, the cache structures can be used as buffers for storing shared data with multi-system read/write access.
Coupling Facility