3390 disks and channel speeds

3390 disk information

Every 3390 disk volume contains 56,664 bytes per track, 15 tracks per cylinder and 849,960 Bytes per Cylinder. The terms 'track' and 'cylinder' come from old pre-raid disks, which were like 8 old fashioned vinyl records stacked in a pile, with a set of fixed read/write heads which moved in and out of them. The disks had recording surfaces on both sides. Of the 16 surfaces, one surface was used for control information which left 15 for data. A 'track' was the amount of data which could be read from a single surface in one revolution, without moving the heads. Think of it as the needle on the vinyl record doing one revolution. A 'cylinder' could be read from all 15 surfaces without moving the heads. This was quite important, as a cylinder could be read quite quickly, without any mechanical movement. The diagram might help explain

Modern disks use FBA storage, but they have to emulate 3390 CKD format, so the terms 'track' and 'cylinder' are still used.

3390 disk numbers

While a 3390-3 disk can store 2.84 GB, you will not get that amount of data on it. Each disk has to contain a Volume Table of Contents (VTOC), a VTOC index, and a VSAM VOLUME DATASET (VVDS). Typically, these require 270 tracks, 14 tracks and 30 tracks respectively. The disk also has a single track self describing label. That lot uses up 315 tracks, or about 18 MB. Then, data is stored on each track in blocks, with inter block gaps in between. Best case for efficient space use is generally half track blocking, which is 27,998 bytes per block, or 55,996 usable bytes per track. The sum is (50,085-315)*55,996 = 2.787 GB. So that means you can store about 2.79 GB of user data on a 3390-3 disk.

Initialising disks

You define a VTOC and Index when you initialise a volume with ICKDSF. A typical command would look like

INIT UNIT(D615) VOLID(D3D615) VTOC(1,0,270) -
 INDEX(0,1,14) VFY(OLDVOL)

The VFY statement is a verify to check the old label on the volume, this makes it less likely to initialise the wrong volume. You need the volume off-line to all systems before initialising it. Note that the ICKDSF statement does not make the disk a 3390. This happens when the disks are logically configured in the hardware.

Allocating a VVDS

The system will allocate a VVDS for you the first time a VSAM file is allocated on a disk, but the default system VVDS is usually too small. You can allocate a VVDS yourself using IDCAMS commands

   DEFINE CLUSTER -                             
     (NAME(SYS1.VVDS.Vvolser) -     
      VOLUMES(volser) -              
      NONINDEXED -                   
      TRACKS(60 15)) -               
      CATALOG(CATALOG.master.name)   

You need to substitute your own volser, and catalog name

OS/390 channel speeds

FICON

FICON (FIbre CONnection) supports up to 16,384 device addresses under a single channel. Bandwidth is 240 MB/s (200 Gb/s). Ficon will also handle mixed block size IO much better than ESCON, which tends to favour large blocks. FICON supports multiple IOs per channel and will support 10km or 20km native. Various channel extender options exist, including the CNT Ultranet Storage Director eXtended (now part of McData) that can extend both FICON and ESCON channels to an indefinite distance.

ESCON

ESCON is a fibre based communications method, with several advantages over parallel. It can run at up to 17 MB/s nominal speed, and can support up to 1024 devices per channel. ESCON will only support 1 IO per channel. Native ESCON distance is limited to 3km, but it can be extended to 60km using repeaters.

Copper Parallel

Called Bus and Tag, or parallel channels, these were massive blue sheathed copper cables as thick as your arm. They were limited to 400 feet long. There are still a few of them out there. Their speed is a maximum of 4.5 MB/s

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