Enhancements of the I/O Autoconfiguration function

HCM provides the following enhancements of the I/O Autoconfiguration function that has been introduced in z/OS V1R12:

• In addition to switched FICON connected controllers, I/O Autoconfiguration can now discover FICON directly attached controllers and devices and proposes point-to-point connection paths if available.
• I/O Autoconfiguration supports the inclusion or exclusion of specific switches or CHPIDs into the discovery and proposal process, that users can explicitly specify with the invocation of an I/O Autoconfiguration request. For this purpose, HCD introduces four new autoconfiguration policy keywords:
  • AUTO_CHPID_INCLUDE
  • AUTO_CHPID_EXCLUDE
  • AUTO_SWAD_INCLUDE
  • AUTO_SWAD_EXCLUDE
• The autoconfiguration policy keyword AUTO_SS_DEVNUM_SCHEME accepts a new value NONE. This value bypasses control unit and device number proposals by HCM and lets the user manually apply the numbers for detected objects.
• I/O Autoconfiguration allows discovery by controller serial number and filters the discovered controllers accordingly.
• HCM can process an I/O Autoconfiguration request that is partially directed against unavailable systems of an LPAR group or a sysplex, or against systems that are not capable to support I/O Autoconfiguration. Users can specify that the request applies to appropriate systems only, and that unavailable/uncapable systems are tolerated but ignored.
• HCM allows users to change certain I/O Autoconfiguration policies between two subsequent controller discoveries without the need to make a new fabric discovery. This enables I/O Autoconfiguration to perform each new controller discovery with changed policies.