[storm] iSCSI MIB: Functional enhancements proposal

["Black, David" <[e-mail]>]

The iSCSI MIB has been waiting for a WG decision about what to incorporate from
the list of functional enhancements suggested by the MIB Doctor review.

With <WG chair hat off>, based on consulting with the MIB draft editors, I offer
the following initial proposal for the WG's consideration ... in the hope of
getting to a decision.

--- Make the following functional enhancements:

[1] Add NOP counters at iSCSI session scope for heartbeat tracking
[2] Add a port number to the iscsiTgtLoginFailure and iscsiIntrLoginFailure notifications,
	and to the last failure info in iscsiInitiatorAttributesEntry.
[3] Add a description string to the iSCSI portal:

iscsiPortalDescr OBJECT-TYPE
    SYNTAX        SnmpAdminString
    MAX-ACCESS    read-only
    STATUS        current
    DESCRIPTION
        "A UTF-8 string, determined by the implementation to
        describe the iSCSI portal.  When only a single instance
        is present, this object may be set to the zero-length
        string; with multiple iSCSI portals, it may be used in
        an implementation-dependent manner to describe the 
        respective portal, and could include information such as
        HBA model, description and version or software driver and
        version."

[4] Support "Target Unmapped" session failure reporting in the iscsiInstSessionFailure notification:

Editors: FailureType is an OID pointing to a stat in iscsiInstSsnErrorStatsTable, so we would need to add this:

    iscsiInstSsnTgtUnmappedErrors       Counter32

[5] Add a port number to iscsiPortalAttributesEntry

[6] Add a timeout counter to iscsiInitiatorLogoutStatsEntry to distinguish implicit
	logouts caused by timeouts from implicit logouts caused by other reasons.

--- Do not make any other functional enhancements, including the following

[A] Summary notifications for large numbers of targets or initiators.  (At most
	a single summary with a count would be appropriate for each notification type).
[B] RowPointer or other connection to transport state as part of
	iscsiInstanceSsnErrorStatsEntry (can be found indirectly in current structure).
[C] Support for reporting more than two digest algorithms (only one is standardized).
[D] Additional list of authentication methods for negotiation (already available based
	on reporting of authorized entities).
[E] Additional support for mutual authentication (check the MIBs at both ends instead).
[F] Support for digest provisioning at the iSCSI node level (use iSCSI portal instead).
[G] Additional session reporting, including digest, error recovery level, session type
	and additional counters for missing PDUs, data in PDUs, data out PDUs, async PDUs.
[H] Report initial remote IP address and port for connections in addition to actual
	IP address and port - this would be for situations in which a redirection has
	occurred.
[I] Report list of discovered targets (out of scope for this MIB).

--------------------

Of the above list, I'd be particularly interested in comments on [A], [G] and [H] -
if these were added to the MIB, would they be likely to be implemented and used?

Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Distinguished Engineer
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
[phone]             FAX: [phone]
[e-mail]        Mobile: [phone]
----------------------------------------------------