November 2000 Minutes
IEEE
Storage System Standards
Working Group
(P1244)

Minutes
Meeting held November 14 through November 16, 2000
At the offices of Systems Engineering and Security, Inc
Greenbelt, Maryland

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 (6).

* Minutes from the September meeting were approved without change.

* The schedule for the next meeting was confirmed for January 16-18, 2001. Paul Lockwood will host the January meeting at a Legato, Inc., facility in Palo Alto, CA.

* The group needs to make a decision on time and location for the March
and May meetings.  The normal every-two-months meeting dates would bracket
the Mass Storage Conference in San Diego.  There is a desire in the group
to not have to travel 3 times in 3 months, but our experience in the past
says a meeting during the Mass Storage Conference would not be our most
productive time or place for a meeting.  We will come to a consensus via
discussions on the "work@ssswg.org" email reflector.

* 1244.6 "Data export/import" - There have been no new comments or
criticisms from the group on the current proposal since the last meeting. 
Curtis needs to write up the XML variant of the structure and add that
text to the document that Joel started.  When that is finished, we will
make one last pass via email discussion and put it in the queue to be
balloted at the first convenient opportunity.

* 1244.8 "C Language API" - Paul is continuing to make progress on this.
The group walked through the entire proposal that Paul generated and
commented on it.  Paul has taken notes and will be producing a new version.
The level of comments given suggests that the next version might be the
penultimate one, that after that version, there will only be presentation
nits before balloting.  Note again that this version will not include
support for new features such as event notification.  1244.8 will need to
be updated when those new features are included in 1244.1, 1244.3, etc.

* 1244.9 & 1244.10 "User and Admin CLI" - The group had a long productive
discussion on how best to present the mechanics of administering an MMS
to an Administrator.  It was decided to define both an object-centered
design allowing direct control of database objects as well as the
common-operation-centered design that Alan has been developing.  The net
result is the addition of a CLI that allows modification of any attribute
of any object in the database via a somewhat wordy but very regular syntax.
Alan will include the changes recommended for the operation-centered
commands into his working documents, as well as the new command, and the
group will review and comment as soon as it is available.

* 1244.11 "Mover" - The group discussed the Mover API that Joel has proposed
as well as: whether an over-the-wire protocol definition is required or not,
and defining a new tape label format that is more capable that ANSI labels.
Some consensus was reached on the format or tape labels, but not yet on the
other topics.

* IEEE Tape Label Format - The group defined a very simple partition label
format that the 1244.11 Mover will directly understand.  It is intended to
support additional features/functions beyond the somewhat dated ANSI standard
tape label.

The first tape file in each tape partition contains exactly one tape record,
64KB in size, followed by a file mark.  That record contains a series of
attribute name/value pairs.  Each pair is a NULL terminated, UTF-8 encoded,
attribute name string of 512 bytes maximum size immediately followed by a
NULL terminated, UTF-8 encoded, attribute value string of 64KB maximum size.
The particular attributes and values represented in the first tape file are
defined by the 1244.11 standard, and will occupy less than the full size of
the tape record.  They are "CartridgeID", "SideName", "PartitionName",
"FirstLabelTime", and "LastLabelTime".  The first three values are copies of
the values of the like-named attributes from the corresponding PARTITION
structure in the MMS catalog.  The last two values are timestamps in the
usual IEEE 1244 format.

The second tape file in each tape partition contains a series of 64KB tape
records, followed by a file mark.  Each record contains attribute name/value
pairs encoded in the same fashion as in the first tape file, but the particular
attributes represented are defined by the application rather than by the
1244.11 standard.  Attribute names or values may span from one tape record
to the next as needed.

* Curtis needs to obtain final edited versions of the balloted standards
from the IEEE Editor that can be used as basis for future versions of 1244.
The New Features will be added to the affected documents with "change bars"
added to highlight them.  The result will be the group's working documents
and will not take effect without passing through the next ballot of the
standard.

* Futures List, "Session Disconnect/Reconnect" - There were no additional
comments or criticisms of the proposal from the July meeting.  Curtis
needs to update the affected documents, chiefly 1244.1, 1244.2, and 1244.3.

* Futures List, "Event Notification Model" - There were no additional
comments or criticisms of the proposal from the July meeting.  Curtis
needs to update the affected documents, chiefly 1244.1 and 1244.3.

* Futures List, "Central Configuration Management" - No discussion.
* Futures List, "LM-Based Drive Selection" - No discussion.
* Futures List, "Automatic Interlibrary Transfer" - No discussion.
* Futures List, "Fine Grained Security" - No discussion.

* 1563.1 & 1563.2 "Tape Standards" - Jack noted that he continues to get
inquiries on 1563.  He believes that the group should start moving on this
as soon as practical.  Since it will dovetail with the MMS in terms of
improving application portability, it may also bring more notice to 1244.

* 1563.3 "Tape Format" - No discussion.


* Evangelism: Continuing discussion of how we can get more attention for
the MMS standards.  Bruce has written an article for publication in the
December issue of the SIGOPS journal and it has been accepted.  Bruce has
also submitted an abstract for a paper to be presented at the next Mass
Storage Conference.

Jack is chairing a tutorial session on the current standards activities
in the storage industry for the IEEE Mass Storage Conference in San Diego.
We will get time in that session to say how our work fits into the larger
picture.

Compaq is now building the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs,
which we expect to include several tape libraries and drives.  Given our
involvement with SNIA's Storage Media Library Working Group, we may be
able to use that lab to both test IEEE MMS implementations and to raise
awareness of the standard.
 
Next Meeting:
        January 16-18, 2001, Legato offices, Palo Alto, CA.

Future Meetings:
        Time and location needs to be decided.

Important links:
http://www.SSSWG.org - Our working group's web site
http://www.StorageConference.org - IEEE Mass Storage Conference
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".

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