ips WG Charter Approved!

[Black_David@emc.com]

I've just been informed that the IESG has approved the
ips charter.  Congratulations - we are now officially
a Working Group, and thanks to all who contributed.

The official charter will appear on the IETF web site 
in the near future, linked to:

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/wg-dir.html#Transport_Area

Here's a close approximation to what was approved;
I believe the differences between this and the official
version are limited to typos, formatting, and the like:

IP Storage (ips) Working Group Proposed Charter - DRAFT 7

Mailing list: ips@ece.cmu.edu

To subscribe, send email to ips-request@ece.cmu.edu
        with "subscribe ips" in the first line of the body.

The list is archived at:
        http://ips.pdl.cs.cmu.edu/mail/maillist.html    

There is significant interest in using IP-based networks to transport block
storage traffic.  This group will pursue the pragmatic approach of
encapsulating existing protocols, such as SCSI and Fibre Channel, in an
IP-based transport or transports.  The group will focus on the transport or
transports and related issues (e.g., security, naming, discovery, and
configuration), as opposed to modifying existing protocols. Standards for
the protocols to be encapsulated are controlled by other standards
organizations (e.g., T10 [SCSI] and T11 [Fibre Channel]).  The WG cannot
assume that any changes it desires will be made in these standards, and
hence will pursue approaches that do not depend on such changes unless they
are unavoidable.  In that case the WG will create a document to be forwarded
to the standards group responsible for the technology explaining the issue
and requesting the desired changes be considered.  The WG will endeavor to
ensure high quality communications with these standards organizations.  The
WG will consider whether a layered architecture providing common transport,
security, and/or other functionality for its encapsulations is the best
technical approach.

The protocols to be encapsulated expect a reliable transport, in that
failure to deliver data is considered to be a rare event for which
time-consuming recovery at higher levels is acceptable.  This has
implications for both the choice of transport protocols and design of the
encapsulation(s).  The WG's encapsulations may require quality of service
assurances (e.g., bounded latency) to operate successfully; the WG will
consider what assurances are appropriate and how to provide them in shared
traffic environments (e.g., the Internet) based on existing IETF QoS
mechanisms such as Differentiated Services.

Use of IP-based transports raises issues that do not occur in the existing
transports for the protocols to be encapsulated.  The WG will address at
least the following: 
- - Congestion control suitable for shared traffic network environments such
    as the Internet.
- - Security measures, including authentication and privacy, sufficient to
    defend against threats up to and including those that can be expected on
a
    public network. 
- - Naming and discovery mechanisms for the encapsulated protocols on
    IP-based networks, including both discovery of resources (e.g., storage)
for
    access by the discovering entity, and discovery for  management. 
- - Management, including appropriate MIB definition(s). 

The WG will address security and congestion control as an integral part of
its protocol encapsulation(s); naming, discovery, and management are
important related issues, but may be addressed in companion documents.

The WG specifications will provide support for bridges and gateways that
connect to existing implementations of the encapsulated protocols. The WG
will preserve the approaches to discovery, multi-pathing, booting, and
similar issues taken by the protocols it encapsulates to the extent
feasible.

It may be necessary for traffic utilizing the WG's encapsulations to pass
through Network Address Translators (NATs) and/or firewalls in some
circumstances; the WG will endeavor to design NAT- and firewall-friendly
protocols that do not dynamically select target ports or require Application
Level Gateways.

Effective implementations of some IP transports for the encapsulated
protocols are likely to require hardware acceleration; the WG will consider
issues concerning the effective implementation of its protocols in hardware.

The standard internet checksum is weaker than the checksums used by other
implementations of the protocols to be encapsulated.  The WG will consider
what levels of data integrity assurance are required and how they should be
achieved.

The WG will produce a framework document that provides an overview of the
environments in which its encapsulated protocols and related protocols are
expected to operate.  The WG will produce requirements and specification
documents for each protocol encapsulation, and may produce applicability
statements.  The requirements and specification documents will consider both
disk and tape devices, taking note of the variation in scale from single
drives to large disk arrays and tape libraries, although the requirements
and specifications need not encompass all such devices.

The WG will not work on: 
- - Extensions to existing protocols such as SCSI and Fibre Channel beyond
    those strictly necessary for the use of IP-based transports. 
- - Modifications to internet transport protocols or approaches requiring
    transport protocol options that are not widely supported, although the
WG
    may recommend use of such options for block storage traffic. 
- - Support for environments in which significant data loss or data
    corruption is acceptable. 
- - File system protocols.

Operational Structure:

Due to the scope of the task and the need for parallel progress on multiple
work items, the WG effort is organized as follows:

A technical coordinator will be identified and selected for each protocol
encapsulation adopted as a work item by the group.  This person will be
responsible for coordinating the technical efforts of the group with respect
to that encapsulation, working with and motivating the document editors, and
evangelizing the group's work within both the community and relevant
external organizations such as T10 and T11.

In addition to the normal responsibilities of IETF working group chairs, the
IPS chairs hold primary responsibility for selection of coordinators,
identifying areas of technical commonality and building cross-technology
efforts within the group.

Coordinators for initially important encapsulations:

SCSI over IP (aka iSCSI): TBD 
Fibre Channel (FC-2) over IP: TBD

Milestones

Oct 00 Post initial versions of requirements and specification drafts for
       the initial protocol encapsulations as working group Internet-Drafts.


Nov 00 Submit initial version of framework document as an Internet-Draft.

Dec 00 Discuss drafts and issues at the IETF meeting in San Diego.

Feb 01 Submit final versions of requirements drafts to the IESG for
       consideration as Informational RFCs. 

Mar 01 Discuss framework, specification and related drafts (e.g., MIBs,
       discovery) for the protocol encapsulations at IETF meeting in
       Minneapolis. 

May 01 Submit protocol specification drafts to the IESG for consideration as
       Proposed Standard RFCs. 

Jun 01 Begin revision of WG charter in consultation with the Area Directors.

Aug 01 Meet at IETF meeting to close any open issues and finish any
       outstanding work items, including MIB, discovery, and framework
drafts. 

Sep 01 Submit MIB, discovery, framework, and any other WG drafts to the IESG
       for consideration as appropriate to each draft.  

--David

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David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 435-1000 x75140     FAX: +1 (508) 497-8500
black_david@emc.com       Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
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