Subject: WG Review: Network File System Version 4 (nfsv4)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 17:50:50 -0500

A modified charter has been submitted for Network File System Version 4 
(nfsv4) in the Transport Area of the IETF.  The IESG has not made 
any determination as yet.

The following description was submitted, and is provided for 
informational purposes only.

Network File System Version 4 (nfsv4)
-------------------------------------

Current Status: Active Working Group

Description of Working Group:

The objective of this working group is to advance the state of NFS
technology by producing specifications to extend the original NFS
Version 4 work (RFC 3010) to provide additional capabilities, as
described below.

o NFS version 4

  Advance the protocol along the standards track, coordinating the
  development of test suites to provide a high level of implementation
  quality. The ONC RPC standards that NFSv4 references must also be
  advanced. This includes work to make NFSv4 and the underlying ONC RPC
  protocol compatible with IPv6.  Specifically, we will advance RFC 
  3010, RFC 1831, RFC 1833 and RFC 2203 to Draft Standard. The working 
  group will help advance related security RFCs, specifically through
  the definition of a method to advance APIs.

o Replication and Migration

  The original working group defined a mechanism for NFS clients and
  servers to support replication and migration of data transparently
  to an application.  Left undefined in the initial work was the
  server back end migration and replication mechanism.  The working
  group will produce a draft submission of a replication/migration
  protocol that supports NFS Version 4 clients - needed to create and
  maintain replicated filesystems as well as migrating filesystems
  from one location to another -  and servers for consideration as
  Proposed Standard.

o Management

  The working group will produce a draft submission for consideration
  as Proposed Standard of a management MIBs to provide better 
  management and administration capabilities for NFS and ONC RPC.

o Minor Versions

  NFS Version 4 contains within it the capability for minor versioning.
  Some discussions within the working group suggest addressing
  additional requirements over the original charter.  The WG will work
  to identify additional requirements for NFSv4 and determine if they
  are appropriate and worthwhile for a minor version.  This work may
  lead to proposals for additional work items.  If it does a specific
  proposal to add these work items to the charter will be forwarded to
  the IESG and IAB.

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NEW CHARTER WORDING ADDITION:

o RDMA/RDDP enabling
 
The performance benefit of RDMA/RDDP transports in NFS-related
applications, by reducing the overhead of data and metadata
exchange, has been demonstrated sufficiently such that the
working group will pursue in parallel enabling NFS and RPC over
the transport defined by the RDDP working group. The WG will
restrict its initial activities to defining the problem
statement and specifying the requirements for possible
extensions to RPC and NFS (in the context of a minor
revision).
=================================================