z/OS FBA services

z/OS FBA services provides the ability to manage and perform I/O on z/OS systems, exploiting the z/OS Distributed Data Backup (zDDB) multi-platform access feature on DS8700 and subsequent model type devices. The new application programming interface (API) provides functions to allocate, read from, write to and deallocate z/OS FBA devices.

z/OS FBA devices are defined using the Hardware Configuration Dialog (HCD) or Hardware Configuration Manager (HCM). z/OS FBA devices must be online in order to be used by z/OS FBA Services.

z/OS FBA devices can be used in many ways. For example, z/OS FBA devices can be used as a data transfer device between a z/OS system and a distributed system. It can also be used as a shared data device between z/OS and other systems. The z/OS FBA service encapsulates the management of z/OS FBA devices and provides capability for I/O channel program creation and execution from z/OS systems.