For years, IBM®’s GDPS® has served as a business continuity solution environment with unmatched data and application protection and resiliency. GDPS is an industry-leading high-availability solution supporting eServer zSeries mainframe environments to ensure server synchronization and data recovery during disruptions. With IBM’s recent introduction of Server Time Protocol (STP), improved Sysplex environments feature streamlined operations, consolidated timing and control links, and a reach spanning 100 km—60 km beyond previous limitations.

Ciena’s CN 4200™ FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform is among the first WDM platforms qualified to support both GDPS and the new STP solution. Additionally, the CN 4200 is the only solution with advanced multiplexing capabilities, allowing multiple STP timing signals to share optical capacity. This approach—compared to a conventional 3R regenerator approach—dramatically reduces wavelength channel counts and network connectivity cost and complexity.

The only DWDM platform in the industry with a fully programmable hardware architecture and interfaces, the CN 4200 supports network solutions on any protocol on any port. This unprecedented flexibility results in the industry’s best aggregation density, highest transport capacity ceiling, and lowest cost for both GDPS and STP environments.

Lowest networking costs: multiplex STP channels onto a single wavelength for maximum wavelength utilization

Highest scalability: add hundreds of replication channels, such as ESCON®, FICON®, and Fibre Channel, on the same system, on the same fiber pair

Unprecedented flexibility: carry any service type on any wavelength with the industry’s only DWDM platform with software-programmable interfaces