Subject: 53rd IETF - Network Data Management Protocol BOF (ndmp)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 10:03:23 -0500

Network Data Management Protocol BOF (ndmp)

Monday, March 18 at 1300-1500
==================================

CHAIRS: Greg Linn <[email-masked]>
        Lawrence Barnes <[email-masked]>

AGENDA:

    - agenda bashing
    - summary of 1st BOF (52nd IETF)
    - NDMP technical overview & Q&A
    - working group charter revisions
    - milestone/deliverable revisions
    - summary and next steps

NDMP History:
The Network Data Management Protocol was conceived in 1995 to provide a
network based method of controlling backup and recovery of remote file
server data. It was initially targeted at closed file server appliances
(filers) that did not provide open platform APIs allowing integration of
foreign data protection management software.

The first commercial deployments of NDMP enabled systems occurred in early
1996.  Since that time more than twenty companies have produced commercial
NDMP enabled applications, data servers, and tape servers.  In the last
five years, tens of thousands of NDMP enabled systems have been successfully
deployed into production customer environments.  The last eighteen months
has seen a significant increase in the number of companies developing NDMP
support for their products.

>From the beginning, NDMP was intended as an open protocol offering multi-
vendor interoperability.  Informal collaborative development between
interested parties has evolved over time into a grass roots workgroup
representing multiple vendors with a developer web site (www.ndmp.org),
a technical email reflector ([email-masked]) representing 300+
subscribers, and weekly workgroup conference calls.  NDMP developers
from multiple companies have also shown a strong presence at the Sun
sponsored Connectathon 2000 & 2001 interoperability test events.

Since 1996, the grass roots NDMP effort has produced four major revisions
of the protocol.  During the last year this multi-vendor group has
operated as a subgroup of the SNIA-Backup workgroup, submitting one
Internet Draft (draft-skardal-ndmpv4-03.txt) representing NDMP v4 and
another Internet Draft (draft-skardal-ndmpv5-requirements-00.txt)
representing a straw man proposal of future NDMP requirements.

NDMP BOF & Workgroup:
As the NDMP grass roots effort continues to evolve, there is a strong
desire on the part of contributing members to formalize the process of
protocol development and specification and to increase opportunities for
NDMP technical review by other internet focused developers.  A recent
survey of active NDMP contributors revealed that there are between eight
and fourteen companies interested in attending a NDMP Birds of a Feather
session at the December IETF meeting with the primary goal of forming an
IETF NDMP workgroup.

Together these companies report between sixty and eighty developers
allocated to NDMP related projects and have committed at least fifteen of
these to participate in NDMP ongoing workgroup activities.  The responding
companies and their primary technical contacts are listed below.

Description of Working Group:

The Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) defines a network-based
mechanism and protocol for controlling backup, recovery, and other
transfers of data between primary and secondary storage.  The NDMP
architecture separates the network attached Data Management Application
(DMA), Data Servers and Tape Servers participating in archival or
recovery operations.  NDMP also provides low-level control of tape
devices and SCSI media changers. The XDR and TCP/IP protocols are
foundations for NDMP.  The key goals of NDMP include interoperability,
contemporary functionality, extensibility, internationalization,
security, and insuring data integrity.

The NDMP Working Group will enhance the protocol to provide generic
support for widely desired new features and excise the biases that limit
the protocol's interoperability.  The NDMP Working Group provides the
forum for the discussion and advancement of the NDMP standard.  The
objective of this NDMP Working Group is to advance the state of NDMP
standards by producing a version 5 specification and other NDMP version
5 standardization and protocol efforts, including a standard version 5
extensions document.

NDMP version 5 will be submitted as an Internet Standards Track RFC. The
first phase of working group activity is to produce a new requirements
document for NDMP version 5.  Such a requirements document will describe
the limitations and deficiencies of current NDMP versions, propose high-
level solutions for improvements, and rate the importance of different
solutions.  Following the publication of this document, work will begin
on producing version 5 of the NDMP specification. It is anticipated that
NDMP version 5 will emphasize the following features:

Restartability and Checkpoints
Improved Authentication
Firewall Compatibility
Internationalization
Generalization for Non-UNIX Environments
Data Management of Data Sets Beyond File Systems
Snapshot Management
Multi-source or Multi-destination Sessions
Standardization of Environment Variables

Further information on these objectives can be found in the document,
"Requirements for Network Data Management Protocol Version 5."

Not In Scope:
The NDMP Working Group will not directly address issues on the periphery
of NDMP. NDMP considers a number of areas outside its focus (e.g. tape
formats and multiplexing formats). As such, the NDMP Working Group is
expected not to address those issues directly. Instead, NDMP should be
designed to support all types of data formats.

Deliverables:
NDMP Version 5 Requirements Document
NDMP Core Protocol Version 5 Document
NDMP Standard Extensions Document
NDMP Version 5 Implementation Guidelines Document

Goals and Milestones:

Done     Submit first revision of NDMP Version 5 Requirements Document
         as an IETF Internet Draft
Dec01    Meet at Utah IETF to discuss and record NDMP version 5
         requirements
Jan01    Create Experimental Extensions Document
Feb02    Finalize NDMP version 5 requirements
Feb02    Organize ongoing work on NDMP version 5 specification changes
Mar02    Compatibility Grid of early version 5 tests at NDMP
         Connectathon: focus on experimental Version 5 extensions
Jul02    First version of Version 5 Core Specification
Sep02    First version of Standard Extensions Specification
Oct02    Second version of Version 5 Core Specification
Jan03    First version of Version 5 Implementation Guidelines
Mar03    Compatibility Grid of version 5 features tested at NDMP
         Connectathon: focus on all version 5 implementations
Apr03    Final version of Version 5 Implementation Guidelines
May03    Final Version 5 Core Specification
May03    Final Standard Extensions Specification

Internet-Drafts:

1. file: draft-skardal-ndmpv4-03.txt
   Title: Network Data Management Protocol Version 4
2. file: draft-skardal-ndmpv5-requirements-00.txt
   Title: Requirements for Network Data Management Protocol Version 5

No Request For Comments