INCITS Background for IMSS Roger Cummings Chair, TG T11.5 VERITAS Software

Topics Introduction to INCITS –Principles –Background –Storage-related Committees & Workgroups –Procedures History Cooperative Strategy Near-term objectives

INCITS International Committee for Information Technology Standardization –Called X3 for many years up to 1998 –Had to change because of “web search problem” –Holds the US TAG for several key ISO groups See for detailswww.incits.org

INCITS is Fully open!! Anyone can attend INCITS no charge Organizational memberships necessary to vote at some Plenary meetings –$800/year/organization ANSI Patent Policy applies: –Reasonable, non-discriminatory –See All drafts and proposals available on public web sites

INCITS Formal standards developer accredited by ANSI, covering: –Programming languages (Fortran, C, Pascal, C++ etc.) –Magnetic & optical media and formats –Real time location systems & RFID technology –Biometrics –Storage interfaces & command sets ……

Storage Interface Committees First formed pre-1977 Splits occurred in 1982 & 1995 The committee names all changed in 1993 as well Now 3 active groups – T10, T11, T13 –See etc. Nearly all widely-used storage peripheral interfaces for last 20 years defined by these committees

INCITS Standards T10T11T13 SCSI commands (disk, tape, mmc) SCSI parallel SAS FIPS 60 (block mux) IPI HIPPI Parallel HIPPI Serial Fibre Channel ATA 7 th gen) ATAPI

INCITS Procedures Policies and Procedures defined in RD-2 –Covers both Standards (equivalent to standards track) Technical Reports (equivalent to informational) –Includes both: Committee Letter Ballots (equivalent to Last Call) Public Review (administered by ANSI) Have to have a Project Proposal approved by committee before beginning work –One standard/TR per project

History Existing storage-related documents: –RFC2834 ARP and IP Broadcast over HIPPI-800. J.-M. Pittet. May (Format: TXT=76243 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC1374) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD) –RFC2835 IP and ARP over HIPPI-6400 (GSN). J.- M. Pittet. May (Format: TXT=74178 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD) –RFC2625 IP and ARP over Fibre Channel. M. Rajagopal, R. Bhagwat, W. Rickard. June (Format: TXT= bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

Approach Existing storage-related MIBs –RFC2837 Definitions of Managed Objects for the Fabric Element in Fibre Channel Standard. K. Teow. May (Format: TXT=87860 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD) FC Management MIB being created by IP Storage WG as a replacement, see: – drafts/draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib-04.txt

Approach –Other MIBs have been either I-Ds or private documents e.g. FA-MIB –Documented after widespread use by T11 as service to industry only (see »Includes indication that new developments should use FC Management MIB Not well coordinated with T11 projects Have not followed IETF practices and approaches

Cooperative Strategy Intend is to coordinate activities between INCITS & IMSS to: –Ensure timeliness wrt other work –Follow latest IETF directions, take advantage of expertise T11.5 has approved a process for this: –Run an internal project as usual, including Letter Ballot, on a draft MIB –When all issues that can be resolved are done, transfer change control to IMSS

Near-term objectives Three MIBs –FC Domain manager –FC Name Server –FC Extensions to Interfaces MIB Project Proposals will be voted on by T11.5 in December –Schedule to transfer to IMSS late summer 2004