Defining a special FBA device (FBA)
You can use a new type of disk devices, known as Fixed Block Architecture (FBA) or Fixed Block (FB) devices. Devices of this type may be considered as a data bridge between z/OS systems and Linux, UNIX®, and Windows® operating systems. Hardware support comes in the form of an optional licensed z/OS Distributed Data Backup (zDDB) multi-platform access feature on DS8700 and disk controllers of subsequent model types. External software support comes in the form of the IOSFBA service (and the macro with the same name), introduced by APAR OA41040.
- Define a new logical control unit of type 2107-FBA, attached to an IBM Z processor by no more than eight FICON channel paths.
- Define from 1 to 256 I/O devices of type FBA in subchannel set 0.
- Connect FBA devices to an operating system (OS) configuration.
Before allocation, FBA devices must be varied online. You can consider connecting them to an OS configuration with the OFFLINE NO attribute or using the regular VARY ONLINE system command. Since the FBA device type belongs to the Unit Record (UR) class of devices, an FBA device may be owned by only one address space at any given time and on the same system. However, FBA devices may be shared by systems in the GRS complex because the IOSFBA service uses ENQs with the scope of SYSTEMS (global ENQs) to serialize allocation of FBA devices. Sharing z/OS FBA devices between systems in different GRS complexes may cause allocation issues. See z/OS MVS Programming: Authorized Assembler Services Guide for more information on z/OS FBA services.