Parallel access volumes (PAV) allow your system to access volumes in parallel when you use an S/390 or zSeries host.
A PAV capability represents a significant performance improvement by the storage unit over traditional I/O processing. With PAVs, your system can access a single volume from a single host with multiple concurrent requests.
You must configure both your storage unit and operating system to use PAVs. You can use the logical configuration definition to define PAV-bases, PAV-aliases, and their relationship in the storage unit hardware. This unit address relationship creates a single logical volume, allowing concurrent I/O operations.
Static PAV associates the PAV-base address and its PAV aliases in a predefined and fixed method. That is, the PAV-aliases of a PAV-base address remain unchanged. Dynamic PAV, on the other hand, dynamically associates the PAV-base address and its PAV aliases. The device number types (PAV-alias or PAV-base) must match the unit address types as defined in the storage unit hardware.
The DS6000™ series supports concurrent or parallel data transfer operations to or from the same volume from the same system or system image for zSeries hosts.