IPFC Working Group IETF Adelaide, Australia March 29, 2000

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IPFC Working GroupIETF Adelaide, Australia
March 29, 2000

• FC Over IP
• draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-00.txt
• E. Rodriguez, Lucent Technologies
• M. Rajagopal, R. Bhagwat, W. Rickard, Gadzoox
  Networks

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Motivation Goals

• To connect islands of Storage Area Networks (SAN)
  using IP as the packet media
• To use existing IP infrastructures to carry Fibre
  Channel over LANs, MANs, and WANs
• To be able to use any link level technology that
  carries IP
• To be able to use the IP protocols that address
  security, performance, and data integrity
• To use FC specifications (including FCP) for
  storage commands, with the FC SANs unaware
  (except for edge devices) of the IP network
  interconnecting the SAN islands.

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Proposal

• Specify a mechanism to encapsulate FC frames in
  IP packets
• IPv4
• IPv6 encapsulation will be defined if
  implementation is eminent
• Independent of link layer protocol
• GigE and SONET link-level issues with regard to
  FC will be addressed in ANSI T11 FC-BB2 STD.
• Reference ANSI T11 FC-SW-2 Switching Standards to
  describe how this mechanism works with FC
  Switching Architectures
• address assignment
• routing
• As a first step, the proposal will address the FC
  backbone network to carry the encapsulated frames
  between FC Border Switches

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Proposal (contd)

• Proposal allows multiple Autonomous Regions to be
  connected over the backbone offering several
  advantages
• Isolation of FC address assignment and
  containment within each Region
• Insulated from any disruptions in FC networks
• Proposal will allow multiple point-to-point links
  between FC Border Switches
• Mechanism is transparent to FC Protocols
• FC Border Switches run a routing protocol in the
  FC plane above the IP plane
• IP will make use of its own routing protocols to
  route packets

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Fibre Channel Issues

• 3 main concerns when FC frame payload is
  transported over other packet media or physical
  technology
• Security
• Data Integrity (loss, out-of-order)
• Performance
• If flow control is used, then performance impacts
  have to be considered
• Idea is to make use of the existing protocols
  that address the above concerns
• Applicable protocols ?
• IPSec
• DiffServ
• VPNs
• Need recommendations from the IETF community on
  the above

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FC-SW-2 and FC over IP Architecture
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Protocol Layers

IP
FC-
2
GigE/
SONET
FC-1
FC-0
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FC and IP Routing Planes
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Routing Table at Border Switches

• Assumptions
• FC addresses assigned to Autonomous Regions and
  the corresponding BSW IP address known
• Table is either statically or dynamically built
• BSW Join/Leave can be statically or dynamically
  updated
• If dynamic, then we need a protocol to update
  table entries when new BSWs join or existing ones
  leave

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Issues

• How is the backbone initialized?
• What happens when there are routing changes in
  the FC plane?
• What assumptions (if any) can we make about FC
  distributed services?
• Impact of any Flow Control at the link-level on
  FC performance?

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IPv4 Header fields of Interest

• DSCP Bits
• Specifies Premium/Assured/Best Effort Service
• Assured Service further differentiates traffic
  based on Class (3 bits) and drop precedence (3
  bits)
• Protocol field
• will specify Fibre Channel IANA needs to assign
  a number for this field

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Schedule

• Prepare 01.txt by next meeting
• Expect to complete work by Dec 2000