SSSWG - November 1995 Minutes

MEETING NOTES FROM Hamid Vazire for SSSWG November 1995 meeting hosted
by ACSC.

Attendees:  Dave Skinner, Merritt Jones, Hamid Vazire, Bob Baird,
Carl Braganza, Anat Gafni, Rich Wrenn, Eric Stouffer, Joel Williams, ???

Hamid
__________________________________________________________________
Hamid Vazire				Phone:	(408) 447-5420
Hewlett-Packard				Fax:	(408) 447-7601
19111 Pruneridge Avenue			email:	vazire@cup.hp.com
Cupertino, California 95014
	

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ACSC IEEE meeting, November 7, 1995:

There were some discussion regarding the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF).
The DMTF is working on storage management components and APIs. We may be
able to leverage their work in the area of device driver APIs (for I/O as well
as libraries). There is a cost to joint this group (we did not have the
exact information). Their objective seems to be to come up with a storage
management API before the end of 1996 (to be verified). 


PVL Plan:
=========
We decided to work on the PVL API during this meeting (mainly Carl and 
Joel). Joel will continue to work on the PVL API document and a draft 
will be ready by 11/95. This document will be in UNIX man page format.
The document will be published on 1244 world web site and will be 
announced on the reflector. The document will be provided on different
format on our web site (arl.mil). These formats will include: ASCII, HTML,
postscript, and Microsoft word for windows. The PVL API document will
also be available on NASA ftp site with the same formats (it will also
be available on ACSC and Fujitus's ftp sites).


During the next two months, Joel will collect and organize comments 
sent to the 1244 reflector. During the January meeting (in Tucson) we 
will review these comments and provide answer, modify, or clarify the
API document. We will then be ready to submit the PVL API for balloting.


We had some discussion regarding the content of the PVL API standard 
document. This discussion is related to the "plug & play" discussion we
had many times in the past. The major question is related to the separation
of the API into client and server. Should the PVL standard define the
following components:
	- Distribution model
	- Networking protocols
	- Wire packet format

We decided for the first version of the PVL standard to focus on the 
functionality provided by the PVL. This functionality is defined as set
of function calls (APIs) available to applications using this API (such
as backup and HSM). The implementation of the PVL component will decide
what kind of networking mechanism to use and how integrate multiple 
instances of applications.

PVL Management functions:
=========================
The current PVL API provides location independent services only. These are
the services which will be used by a storage management application such
as backup and HSM. This will allow these applications to be able to use
different implementations of PVL. The management services provided
by PVL (such as configuration, security and accounting) will not be
defined in this version. The definition of the management services requires
the development of the Management Standard (1244.?). Therefore the 
management services will be defined after the completion of the work of
the management sub-group of P1244. Following is a list of services which
will be provided as management services by PVL:

	Policies: configuration of default policies and dynamic 
		  binding of user provided policy managers

	Security: user management and ACLs for objects managed by PVL

	Location dependent information gathering

	Configuration: creation, deletion, change, import / export, etc. 
		       for all objects managed by PVL (like cartridges, 
		       volumes, PVRs, etc.)

	Event management: primitives to facilitate:
		- auditing (logical and physical), accounting,  monitoring
		- disaster recovery, high availability, performance, transport
		- import / export, administration and enforcing policies