SNAplus

[Alan Riggs]

I need to connect into an IBM network for EDI transfers. Our customer only suports bisymchronous modedm or SNA/SDLC connections into their network. I am currently looking into both options, but I have never worked with SNA on HP-UX. I need to know whether installing the SNA plus (II ?)product will allow my servers (K580 and L3000) to drive a standard asynchronous modem for SDLC connectivity?

And, of course, any other hints from someone who has experience with SDLC wil be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Volker Borowski]

Hi,

this is a very long time ago, I came across this one, but the only thing I remember is, that that SNA software stuff was EXTREMLY expensive for HP (This was somewhere in the early nineties).

We decided to go for a seperate solution based on a PC running IBMs OS/2 with Comunication-Manager and TCP/IP Protocol. Transfer was scheduled through OS/2 (file-commands "send" and "receive" for some LU6.2 protocol) to a directory, that was NFS-exported by OS/2.

Yeah, I am not kidding !!! The entire thing was about 10% of the HP-SNA-Software solution price including the PC-hardware and OS/2.

I know this may be beyond support today, but as far as I know this old box is still doing it's job. If price policies are still the same with SNA on HP, you might consider to choose an RS6000 solution to get this stuff to UNIX. May be the SNA software is cheaper on IBM-steel. May be some IBM-employees already adopted some linux-version in their spare time ?

I know this does not really help,
so good luck and no points please.
Volker

[Alan Riggs]

Hay! Don't go trying to tell me where I can spend my points! 87)

Seriously, cautionary tales are helpful, too. One always wants to know what he is going up against.

[Volker Borowski]

Thanks for the three :-)

Just because of curiosity, I asked Google for SNA and LINUX. There is some stuff available:

http://www.firstlinux.com/product/Servers/126.shtml
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/expo/lw-wednesday-impact.html
http://www.gcom.com/home/products/sna_spec.html

Ranges between 4000 and 8000 USD, so still no dumping conditions, esp. if you assume, you only need file transfer, and not this 3270 and 5220 emulation stuff.

There is even an open-source reference for SNA on linux, but it was a dead page...

Good hunting
Volker

[George_Dodds]

Hi Alan
My old company used to use hp sna on there d and k class local & remote servers, mostly for connection to there ibm mainframe, There was a lot of edi data transfer involved as well.

It all worked really well and sna was easy to support.

I'll try to dig out my stash of docs and see if there's any info there that might be of help, as i cannot remember off the top of my head.

Cheers

George

[steven Burgess_2]

Alan

I work for the company George is talking about
and yes it is an excellent tool used to transmit sna traffic

We use dlsw on cisco router to enable transfer of mainframe traffic.configuring cip channels on our m/frame

Attached are 2 docs on dlci and sna support

Once configured and up and running you barely have to touch it

DOC FOR SNA

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/mpeix/onlinedocs/30291-90507/30291-90507_top.html&con=/mpeix/onlinedocs/30291-90507/00/00/8-con.html&toc=/mpeix/onlinedocs/30291-90507/00/00/8-toc.html&searchterms=sna&queryid=20020205-105854

[Alan Riggs]

Thanks Steven. I checked the doc you posted (I only saw one) and it is specific to the MPE environment. I had actually done a bit of poking around on docs.hp.com and seen the same thing. Lots of docs on SNA w/MPE. Lots of docs about migrating SNAplus to SNAplus2 on HP-UX. Nothing (that I found) for general SNAplus(2) setup on HP-UX.

If you are using this on K and D class servers, can you tell me whether you are driving any of it over a modem? If so, does it require a special hardware interface (cable, card, modem, all of the above?)

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi mate , sorry I haven't replied, been off

We use sna on D and K class servers. Our connections are over frame relay using cisco routers to pass data across the network to the mainframe

As far as implementing it i'm unsure as i'm new to hpux

I have attached another doc which I use for support

I'll have another look to see if we have any further docs and will ask the question about implementation as I am also interested for my own knowledge

[Alan Riggs]

Thanks -- I've been a bit preoccupied myself. (Nothing like having a data center UPS explode to liven up a weekend.)

I'm afraid I can't get into your attachment. Any chance you could resubmit it?

[Dave La Mar]

Alan -
We have been an IBM for over 30 years and just introduced HP-UX a year ago.
The mainframe OS is VM/VSE.
We have a tcpip product installed for VSE.
Daily we transmit data between the two platforms, including EDI, via ftp.
The IBM OS you are involed in was not mentioned, but tcpip is available on an MVS platform as well.
We found no need to add sna to our HP-UX boxes.
We call VSE driver procs form a unix script, execute unix scripts from VSE jcl. You name it.
Works fine, fast, and stable.
Best of luck.
dl

[Dave La Mar]

Alan -
On another note. There are a number of manufacturers of sdlc cards.
Most will run under a windows platform.
Connection types are numerous for the same card.
I suupose you couls ftp the files to that machine, connect to the customer vi sna/sdlc
and transfer files that way as well.
Our most common card in use was Pathway, later bought out by ICOT.
One of the techs found someone unloading these cards at $75.00/ea.
Once again, best of luck.
dl