How to Connect Two Fibre Channel Initiators

[Will]

If you want to connect two fibre channel initiators together and have them
exchange information over fibre channel, does this require you to use a
switch between them? I'm used to connecting initiators to targets, and
I've never had to deal with connecting two initiators. I'm not clear on
whether the fibre channel model has a way to accomodate two directly
attached initiators so that they can synch lock to each other.

My application is IBM FICON, but that is close enough to fibre channel that
I'm asking the question in terms of fibre channel since many more people
will be familiar with fibre channel. The application here is to have two
IBM mainframes connect their channels to each other in order to copy data
from one mainframe to the other using FICON. In this model, both
mainframes are initiators, and to do a channel to channel copy I just want
to understand the theory about whether you should be able to direct connect
FICON on one side to FICON on the other side without introducing a switch
between the two initiators.

 

[Jaroslaw Weglinski]

If you want to connect two fibre channel initiators together and have them
exchange information over fibre channel, does this require you to use a
switch between them? I'm used to connecting initiators to targets, and
I've never had to deal with connecting two initiators. I'm not clear on
whether the fibre channel model has a way to accomodate two directly
attached initiators so that they can synch lock to each other.

My application is IBM FICON, but that is close enough to fibre channel that
I'm asking the question in terms of fibre channel since many more people
will be familiar with fibre channel. The application here is to have two
IBM mainframes connect their channels to each other in order to copy data
from one mainframe to the other using FICON. In this model, both
mainframes are initiators, and to do a channel to channel copy I just want
to understand the theory about whether you should be able to direct connect
FICON on one side to FICON on the other side without introducing a switch
between the two initiators.

there is no such thing as fibre channel initiator. FC is used to
transport other protocols (SCSI, IP ...), and FC "initiator" is usually
SCSI initiator. If you use IP over FC, you don't have (iirc) any initiator.

FC topology is not connected to protocols transported over FC (so you
can have point-to-point, AL, or fabric connection if your FC
implementation supports them all). iirc if you use FICON, you transfer
something called "single byte command sets" over FC. I don't know, if
you can connect two servers directly to transfer data using FICON, but
if you can, it shouldn't be dependent on FC topology (assuming that your
FICON cards can use any topology other than switch connect - you can
check it up in manual - can you interface disks to server directly, or
only through switch?)