OSPF - Open Shortest Path First

An important aspect in the huge operation is the performance and availability the underlying platform z/OS.

Many applications require a high availability . In the z/OS infrastructure environment, also really important to have fault tolerance like HP nonstop.

For that, Z/OS has the feature called ‘Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)’ network. This is a dynamic routing technique, instead of the static routing that has been used in mainframe environment. This implementation makes the z/OS platform fully tolerant to network failures through automatic failover and recovery.

The failover process

Failover means that when one machine fails, another machine takes over and resumes service. 

To address this issue, and to make further improvements in the z/OS configuration , all z/OS environments can get migrated into the OSPF network.

Open Shortest Path First

As written above, OSPF stands for ‘Open Shortest Path First’. It is a technique where the z/OS network traffic will be routed though the most efficient path. 

- With OSPF we are able to stay fully available on the network in case of a (network) disaster. 

- The failover will be performed automatically and no manual intervention is required. 

With OSPF, z/OS now has its own logical network. This means that there will be no interference with other network changes or failovers outside of z/OS.