Re: profiles - a way to simplify iSCSI

[julian_satran@il.ibm.com]

Sandeep,

Yes. Profiles will be all or nothing and the what is mandated in every
profile will appear in the draft and what is not mandated at a profile will
never be used (can as well not be there).

A simple two profile scheme can be built using as a profile 0 whatever is
today mandatory
(or defaulted to yes or equivalent) and as profile one everything else.

Regards,
Julo

Sandeep Joshi <sandeepj@research.bell-labs.com> on 21-06-2001 21:19:21

Please respond to Sandeep Joshi <sandeepj@research.bell-labs.com>

To:   Julian Satran/Haifa/IBM@IBMIL
cc:   ips@ece.cmu.edu
Subject:  Re: profiles - a way to simplify iSCSI





Hmm..this is somewhat tempting.

 The parameters seem to fall into 2-3 clusters
(1)  initialR2T, maxR2T, immediate data, firstburst, pdulength, etc
(2)  the marker related keys
(3)  names, aliases, bootsession, maxconnections, loginlogout min-max.

It would be nice if a "profile" could simplify these dependencies.

Under this proposed setup, I presume the target & initiator would first
send a profile-name which would initialize the appropriate parameters
in the set.  If a vendor is unsure of a particular profile, support
for it would not be advertised.  Once a profile is decided, only
numeric keys would be negotiated.

Could you elaborate further on your proposal ?

-Sandeep

julian_satran@il.ibm.com wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> iSCSI keeps getting richer in negotiable parameters/features.
> Although flexibility is a great thing every new negotiable
> parameter/feature get us all worrying about:
>
>    what it will break when used in combination with other
>    parameters/features
>    how are we going to test that all our combinations work as we think
that
>    they are specified
>    are we understanding/specifying the combinations the same way as
anybody
>    else
>
> I assume that many of you are wondering, as I do, if all this flexibility
> is really worth it's price.
> Would the community not be better served by specifying profiles that are
a
> complete-and-invariable combination of features and very small set of
> numerical parameters?
>
> I would start with 2 profiles:
>
>    the minimal profile (only basic features)
>    the maximum profile (all the features)
>
> and then (only if we are strongly convinced it is needed) add a middle
> point.
>
> Please comment,
> Julo