Hi John,  When you add an engine the port layout for the engine will be symmetrical so you will be unable to "swap" a Ficon port module with a FA port module on another director as you would alter the engine port symmetry.   Adding engines and drive bays is an online procedure. Discuss the upgrade plan with your EMC account team to verify the process.  Steve
All  A couple of issues surrounding an upgrade from a vmax-2 to a vmax-3.   1. We're introducing FICON along with Engine 3, along with some additional FA modules. First thoughts was to plan thus: 6                                   5 FAFAFAFA FI FI           FAFAFAFA FI FI   ie four FA and two FICON on each even and odd director.   However am being challenged to "improve" resiliency by making space for one pair of FICON connections within an existing Engine (Director 10), thus making this Engine 5 asymmetric, but ostensibly placing FICON on different Engines, that is, one pair on existing Director 10 and one pair on new Director 5.   Does this make sense? Does one gain resiliency across the Engines that isn't present across Directors in the same Engine?  My inclination is to for my original schema ie divide FICON across Directors on Engine 3, but would welcome other's thoughts here...............  Lastly, should we expect our BIN reload to accomplish this work (plus a new frame and disk) to be entirely NDU, assuming we have placed all our existing open systems hosts on at least two FA directors (and our unix hosts on all four Directors in a VMAX-2).   Comments appreciated.   john
vmax engine upgrade - FICON host planning