RE: Additional FC MIBs proposed

[Roger Cummings <[e-mail]>]

Keith,

T11 has certainly traditionally not had a great amount of MIB expertise,
although with the formation of T11.5 containing some organizations with
expertise in this area, and the participation of some of us in efforts like
the SCSI MIB along with some notable experts that's changing, albeit slowly.
:-)) However that is OK because T11 has also never generated a MIB for Fibre
Channel, as far as I'm aware. The draft-ietf-ipfc-fcmgmt-int-mib was neither
submitted to the IETF by T11 (it was created in an independent industry
group called the Fibre Alliance), nor was it developed in T11.

I'm frankly not sure what your reference to "publishing
draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib
as if it were the definitive standard for a Fibre Channel MIB" relates to.
If this relates to the MIB-FA Technical Report that was recently published
as INCITS TR-33:2003 then:

a) This is a Technical Report, NOT a standard, definitive or otherwise.

b) The TR contains three different revisions of the MIB, because all three
are used and different.

c) The Scope section of this document states:

The MIBs specified in this technical report are widely implemented even
though they do not meet IETF requirements. To address this issue a revised
Fibre Channel Management MIB has been developed in the IETF. For new
implementations, vendors should implement the revised IETF Fibre Channel
Management MIB.

This wording was introduced in response to a comment submitted against the
T11 Letter Ballot by Cisco. I'm both the T11.5 Chair and the T11 webmaster,
and I'm certainly not aware of any  requests for wording in relation to this
subject that weren't honored.

The T11 web site does not list any reference to draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib as
a published standard. Quite to the contrary, the front page for Task Group
T11.5 (http://www.t11.org/t11/stat.nsf/tg5) links to a page containing SNMP
information on which the only MIBs referenced are the IETF Entity MIB, and
the FC Management MIB I-D via the link on the IETF IP Storage WG page.

Keith, I completely agree that the current situation regarding the FA MIB is
NOT good, and I'd like to see the new MIB adopted with all possible speed.
Part of the reason that I agreed to come back into T11 and get involved in
T11.5 was a realization that the many of the FC companies had not been
closely integrated enough with the development of management interfaces and
information definitions. That having been said, I'm under pressure from some
quarters to focus T11.5's attention on newer and supposedly "more
extensible" management schemes. I think that would be narrow-minded in the
extreme, but discussions like this aren't exactly helping my cause!

I've already indicated to the IPS WG Co-Chairs that I'm neutral as to where
further MIB work for FC gets done, and I'll personally participate wherever
this happens. If the decision is that there is insufficient support in the
IETF I'll solicit support for one or more new projects getting created in
T11.5 to do this work, and I'll issue a call for people with expertise to
participate as always. I still have the slides from your "Tips on MIB
design" presentation that you gave to the IP Working Group on August 27,
2001 and I'd certainly solicit your making the same type of presentation in
T11.5 and your active participation in the work there if at all possible.
Regardless of where the work gets done, I think you'll find a number of
people with very firm desires NOT to repeat what happened with the earlier
Fibre Channel MIBs.

Regards,





Roger Cummings

[e-mail]




-----Original Message-----
From: Keith McCloghrie [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 1:15 PM
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Additional FC MIBs proposed


The issue with doing the MIBs in T11 is that T11 has, in the past, not
had the appropriate amount of MIB expertise.  My understanding is that
T11 themselves acknowledged this by the submission of the "Fibre
Alliance MIB" as draft-ietf-ipfc-fcmgmt-int-mib.  However, as and when
the IPFC WG had completed all other items in its charter, it had been
unable to reach consensus on that MIB.  So, to allow the IPFC WG to
conclude, the unfinished work item was moved to the IP Storage WG.
After abortive attempts to get changes in draft-ietf-ipfc-fcmgmt-int-mib,
I created draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib as a MIB which: a) meets IETF's
standards, b) replaces both draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib and the overlapping
RFC 2837, and c) details the problems with those previous MIBs.

Meanwhile, T11 has published on its website a copy of one version (I'm
not sure if it's the latest version) of draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib.
Since that MIB is widely implemented in the industry, I agreed that
such publication would be appropriate *if* T11's publication indicated
that the MIB is already being deprecated by the IETF's definition of
draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib.  The last time I looked, T11 had failed to
do that; rather, T11 seem to have published draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib
as if it were the definitive standard for a Fibre Channel MIB.
(However, the MIB was still in its Internet-Draft format, and perhaps
T11 intended that as an indication that the MIB was just a draft, as
ephemeral as all Internet-Drafts are, by definition).  These recent
actions of T11 suggest to me that they still do not have the
appropriate amount of MIB expertise.

The bottom line is that a bad MIB was widely implemented in the industry,
and I believe that network management of Fibre Channel devices suffered
because of that.  A better MIB for Fibre Channel has been defined in the
IP Storage WG, who have already discussed the definition of further FC MIBs
(see http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/mailinglists/ips/mail/msg09473.html), but
deferred them as future work.

Keith.


> It doesn't appear that any of these MIBs are in scope for us. They
> don't deal with IP storage. They are all very specific to Fibre Channel
> and deal mostly with fabric issues. T11 would be more appropriate.
> 
> Pat
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 6:55 AM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Additional FC MIBs proposed
> 
> 
> Everyone,
> 
> This Internet-Draft describes a number of MIBs that the authors
> would like the IPS WG to take up.  The WG chairs are seeking
> input on the level interest in standardization and use of these
> MIBs, the appropriateness of working on them here (vs. T11) and
> prioritization (which ones to take up first, as all 9 in parallel
> is not likely).
> 
> Send comments/opinions/etc. to the list or directly to Elizabeth
> ([e-mail]) and myself ([e-mail]).
> 
> Thanks,
> --David
> ----------------------------------------------------
> David L. Black, Senior Technologist
> EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
> [phone]             FAX: [phone]
> [e-mail]        Mobile: [phone]
> ----------------------------------------------------
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 2:28 PM
> Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-gai-fc-mibs-00.txt
> 
> 
> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
> directories.
> 
> 
> 	Title		: MIBs Standardization for Fibre Channel
> 	Author(s)	: S. Gai et al.
> 	Filename	: draft-gai-fc-mibs-00.txt
> 	Pages		: 9
> 	Date		: 2003-6-20
> 	
> Fibre Channel (FC) is a high speed serial interface technology that   
> supports several Upper Layer Protocols including Small Computer 
> System Interface (SCSI) and IP. Fibre Channel is standardized by the 
> INCITS T11 Technical Committee. Fibre Channel Standards include 
> Framing and Signaling protocols [FC-FS], Generic Services protocols 
> [FC-GS-3], Switch Fabric protocols [FC-SW-2], etc.
> The management of a Fibre Channel network requires to monitor and set 
> many parameters related to these protocols and this may be 
> accomplished defining a proper set of MIBs.
> 
> A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-gai-fc-mibs-00.txt
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