March 2001 Minutes
IEEE Computer Society
Storage System Standards
Working Group
(P1244, P1563)

Minutes
Meeting held March 13-15, 2001
At the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Technology Center,
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Jack Cole, IEEE Sponsor
Curtis Anderson, SSSWG Chair; Alan Rollow, SSSWG Vice Chair

1244.1  Architecture/Data Model
        Geoff Peck (principal), Curtis Anderson, Joel Williams,
        Murali Sathyanarayana
1244.2  Session Security, Authentication, and Initialization Protocol
        Bruce Haddon (principal 2000-), Jan Klier (principal 1997-2000),
        Curtis Anderson, Joel Williams
1244.3  Media Management Protocol
        Murali Sathyanarayana (principal), Curtis Anderson, Joel Williams
1244.4  Drive Management Protocol
        Joel Williams
1244.5  Library Management Protocol
        Joel Williams
1244.6  Media Manager Interchange Protocol
        Joel Williams (principal), Curtis Anderson
1244.7  Media Manager Control Interface Protocol
        no current editor
1244.8  The C Language Procedural Interface
        Paul Lockwood
1244.9  MMS User Mount Commands
        Alan Rollow
1244.10 MMS Standard Administrative and Operational Commands
        Alan Rollow
1244.11 MOVER
        Joel Williams
New Features List
        Curtis Anderson

ATTENDANCE (5).

* Minutes from the January meeting were approved without change.

* 1244.6 "Data export/import" - Curtis needs to create a Document Type Definition (DTD) for the XML and include both that and a bit more explanatory text into the document.

* 1244.8 "C Language API" - Paul is continuing to make progress on this, as time permits from his employer's needs.

* 1244.9 & 1244.10 "User and Admin CLI" - Alan lead some discussion of the structure of the arguments for the command line tools.  Syntax was agreed upon for expressing the structure of the "-M" argument to the various command line tools.  It allows the user to supply an arbitrary MATCH clause to more closely specify which object(s) the MMS CLI tools should operate on.  The accepted syntax will look very similar to an expression in the Perl language.

* 1244.11 "Mover" - Discussion of the Mover centered around the newly formed "IP-Tape Initiative" (see below) and their goal of enabling backup applications to effectively deal with IP-Attached Storage.  They are likely to have the same needs as the 1244 Mover, so it was felt that we should open a discussion with them before going much further with the Mover.  Curtis took the action item to call some of the people in that group and see what could be arranged as far as cross-pollination talks.

We don't really know what we want from the Mover yet.  Is it just an API with a standard set of semantics that an application can depend on? It would then have to have a switchout for different data transports. Who is the target of the Mover API?  What are they trying to do?  Some argue that HSM is dead and that tape is now only important/used as a backup media, so who else besides a backup app would use a Mover? Vertically integrated apps like document imaging, etc?  We may get a new viewpoint from the people in the IP-Tape Initiative, although they seemed to Curtis to be of the "tape is used for backup" mindset so far.

* 1244 Futures, "Session Disconnect/Reconnect" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Event Notification Model" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Central Configuration Management" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "LM-Based Drive Selection" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Automatic Interlibrary Transfer" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Fine Grained Security" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Migrate Control" - No discussion.
* 1244 Futures, "Self Description" - No discussion.

* 1563.1 & 1563.2 & 1563.3 "Tape Standards" - No discussion.

* Paul gave an overview of a technique that Legato is going to use that allows support of NDMP controlled tape drives without making any changes to their existing SmartMedia product.  The technique would also work with a standard MMS.  It adds a new capability group to each NDMP-controlled drive's DM where each member token in the group is the name of one of the computers that can access the tape drive.  An application could then ask the MMS to mount a tape with the mount mode "ndmp@filer1" and the only drives that would match were those that could be accessed by "filer1" using the NDMP protocol.  This is a convention rather than a standard, but it appears to be a useful one.

* Curtis needs to obtain copies of the final versions of the balloted standards, in editable form, from the IEEE Editor for the remaining documents.  Joel has volunteered time to incorporate the updates/changes that the group has been accumulating into those documents.  The changes include wording fixes, clarifications, and support for the New Features. The result will be the group's working documents and will not take effect without passing through the next ballot of the standard.

* Related Standards Organizations - Updates were given on the other standards organizations that members of the group participate in:

+ The group received a tour of the SNIA Technology Center.  It is extremely well provisioned and has started to accumulate technology and products from SNIA's member companies.  The Center will be used for interoperability testing and training on storage technology.

+ Curtis gave an update on the newly formed "IP-Tape Initiative".  It was started by Spectralogic, Inc., and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) as a way of focusing attention in the IP-Attached Storage community on the special needs of removeable media (specifically tape) and associated robotics.  A kickoff meeting was held in San Francisco on March, 27.  They are forming as a specialized marketing group inside the SNIA that will feed technical requirements and protocol reviews to the standards groups working
on IP-Attached Storage.  Their goal is to ensure that the world of tapes and backups is not left behind in the rush to support disk drives over TCP/IP. The ability to access/control tape drives and to control tape robotics over the same TCP/IP network that is used to access the disk drives is critical. Ie: IP-Attached Backups are just as important as IP-Attached Disks.  Curtis needs to open a conversation with this group toward using the MMS as the management infrastructure for their Initiative.

* Evangelism: Many options were discussed for how to get more attention and interest in the MMS standard.  Some proposals were quite wild, most are listed below (without filtering out those that are unlikely to happen):

+ It was noted that the SNIA IP-Storage Forum kickoff had 80 attendees, and
  the IP-Storage Technical Forum kickoff had 60 attendees.  There is interest
  out there in IP-attached storage, and the MMS is IP-attached control/mgmt
  of removable storage, so our task is to get some of that attention.
+ Recast MMS as "iMMS" and try to get a SNIA or IETF working group?
+ Write a CIM Provider for MMS to get attention from SNIA?
+ Join SNIA'a IP-Tape Initiative and get adopted as the management system?
+ Co-locate a SSSWG meeting with a SNIA SMLWG meeting?
+ Recast MMS into XML and try to get IETF attention?
+ Ask a company involved in IP-Storage (or a systems vendor) to host a
  SSSWG meeting?
+ Ask Michael Peterson of SNIA (or some other well-connected Storage
  marketing person) for feedback on MMS and industry adoption, motivations,
  and roadblocks?
+ Do we need a marketing group?
+ Curtis and Bruce are giving talks on aspects of the MMS at the Mass
  Storage Symposium in April.
+ Joel is doing a talk on the MMS at a THIC meeting in May.
+ Jack Cole is trying to set up a Security in Storage Symposium to bring
  together people from many different backgrounds/agendas on how security
  is being added to Storage Systems now that storage is moving out from
  behind the server platform.  The IETF's IPS WG has one approach, the SCSI
  T10 group is adding security directly to SCSI, vendors have their own
  approaches, etc.
+ Some said that NDMP seems likely to stay focussed on appliances, that it
  is not a terribly good solution for general purpose tape access right now.
+ The IP-Tape Initiative seems to be much closer to what we want/need from a
  Mover than NDMP right now.
+ We don't know anything about Spetralogic's ITP (Internet Tape Protocol)
  yet, but it is included in one of their new products.  It almost certainly
  has the ability to control tape robotics, but is it based on building SCSI
  CBDs and passing them around or is it at a more abstract level?  Does it
  support streaming access to a tape (block boundaries are not visible to
  the app), does it only support block oriented, both?
+ Arbitration between potential accessors of a tape (enabling sharing)
  will become even more important in the IP-attached future.  The MMS is
  good at this, and is available right now.
+ Nobody else comes close to the cartridge/drive compatibility support
  (if they even try to address this problem) than the MMS does.
+ Building LM's into robots is a good fit with IP-Tape, which may be our
  entre into their mindshare.

Next Meeting:   ** NOTE CHANGE IN LOCATION **
        May 15-17, 2001, in the San Jose area.

Future Meetings:
        July 17-19, 2001, in the Boulder, Colorado, area.
        September 18-20, 2001, on the East Coast somewhere.
        November - Looking for suggestions.

Important links:
http://www.SSSWG.org - Our working group's web site
http://www.StorageConference.org - IEEE Mass Storage Conference
To be held in San Diego from 4/16-4/20.
http://www.IEEE-SSSC.org - IEEE Storage Standards Steering Committee
http://www.SNIA.org - Storage Networking Industry Association

Active discussion continues on the above topics on the email reflector
"work@ssswg.org".  Please subscribe if you are interested in hearing more
by sending email to "majordomo@ssswg.org" with a body of "subscribe work".

SSSWG Home