Subject: WG Review: Internet and Management Support for Storage (imss)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 13:05:26 -0400

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Internet Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following
description was submitted, and is provided for informational
purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list
([email-masked]) by October 13.

 Internet and Management Support for Storage (imss)
 --------------------------------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

 Description of Working Group:

 Fibre Channel is a high speed network technology primarily used for
 storage networking (i.e., Storage Area Networks [SANs]). Two
 important aspects of Fibre Channel interact with the Internet:
         - Fibre Channel can encapsulate and carry IP protocol traffic
         - Fibre Channel devices can be managed via SNMP

 The Internet and Management Support for Storage WG (imss) is chartered
 to address two areas, specifically:
         - IPv4 over Fibre Channel has been specified in RFC 2625. A
             corresponding specification for IPv6 is needed.
         - An initial Fibre Channel Management MIB has been developed by
             the IP Storage (ips) WG; extensions are needed to encompass
             management of additional aspects of Fibre Channel, such
             as zoning.

 In the future, other storage related MIBs for other storage transports
 such as Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or SCSI command specific MIBs may
 be proposed.

 As Fibre Channel standardization is handled by the INCITS T11 Technical
 Committee (http://www.t11.org), a close working relationship with T11 is
 essential to the WG's success. In particular:
         - The IPv6 over Fibre Channel specification will be based on
             draft-desanti-ipv6-over-fibre-channel-02.txt. This draft
             was originally developed within a T11 study group and T11
             has officially recommended this draft to the IETF.
         - The WG will not standardize management of Fibre Channel features
             ahead of their incorporation into appropriate T11 Fibre
             Channel standards.
         - The WG will work closely with T11, specifically Task Group T11.5,
             on the functionality and structure of the MIBs it develops
             for management of Fibre Channel.