Network Data Management Protocol BOF (ndmp) Monday, March 18 at 1300-1500 ================================== CHAIRS: Greg Linn Lawrence Barnes 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 (ndmp-tech@ndmp.org) 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