IP Storage (ips)

Last Modified: 2007-05-31

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/ips

Chair(s):

David Black <black_david@emc.com>

Transport Area Director(s):

Transport Area Advisor:

Lars Eggert <lars.eggert@nokia.com>

Technical Advisor(s):

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: ips@ietf.org
To Subscribe: https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ips
In Body: subscribe
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ips/index.html

Description of Working Group:

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's
protocol encapsulations will incorporate the following:

- Congestion control suitable for shared traffic network
environments such as the Internet.

- Security including authentication, keyed cryptographic data
integrity and confidentiality, sufficient to defend against threats
up to and including those that can be expected on a public network.
Implementation of basic security functionality will be required,
although usage may be optional.

The WG will also address the following issues related to its protocol
encapsulations:

- 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) for the
encapsulations.

- By agreement with the IESG, the WG will additionally develop MIB
definitions for the SCSI and Fiber Channel standards.

The WG specifications will allow the implementation of 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 using 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 use 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 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:

Keith McCloghrie (kzm@cisco.com) will serve as the MIB and Network
Management advisor for the WG.

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 are responsible 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): John Hufferd (hufferd@us.ibm.com)

Fibre Channel (FC-2) over IP: Murali Rajagopal (muralir@cox.net)

iFCP: Franco Travostino (travos@nortelnetworks.com)

Goals and Milestones:

Done		Submit the initial protocol encapsulations as working group Internet-Drafts.
Done		Submit initial version of framework document as an Internet-Draft.
Done		Discuss drafts and issues at the IETF meeting in San Diego.
Done		Discuss framework, specification and related drafts (e.g., MIBs, discovery) for the protocol encapsulations at IETF meeting in Minneapolis.
Done		Submit final version of iSCSI requirements draft to the IESG for consideration as Informational RFC.
Done		Submit initial Internet-Draft of FCIP/iFCP common encapsulation format
Done		Begin revision of WG charter in consultation with the Area Directors.
Done		Meet at IETF meeting in London to discuss specification and related drafts (e.g., MIBs, discovery) for the protocol encapsulations
Done		WG Last Call on IPS security considerations document.
Done		WG Last Calls on iSCSI, iSCSI naming/discovery, and iSCSI MIB.
Done		WG Last Calls on all WG drafts intended to be published as RFCs, except NAA naming draft
Done		Submit remaining non-MIB protocol drafts intended to be published as RFCs to IESG, except NAA naming draft
Done		Revise iSCSI boot draft to address security issues and submit to IESG
Done		Determine whether to advance NAA naming draft for publication as an RFC in consultation with Technical Committee T10
Done		Submit draft on iSCSI ordering considerations for SCSI commands to IESG for consideration as Informational.
Done		Submit NAA naming draft to IESG for publication as an RFC
Done		Review with ADs what (if any) additional work the WG should undertake
Done		Submit iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) and DA (Datamover Architecture) drafts to IESG as for Proposed Standard
Done		Submit remaining MIB draft (iSNS) to IESG for Proposed Standard
Done		Submit X#NodeArchitecture key draft to IESG for RFC publication
Done		Submit iSCSI clarifications and corrections draft to IESG for Proposed Standard

No Current Internet-Drafts

Request For Comments: