Skip to main content

Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-nfsv4-federated-fs-protocol

Working Group:  NFSv4
Area Director:  David Harrington
Document Author/Shepherd:  Spencer Shepler (sshepler@microsoft.com)

Internet Draft:


draft-ietf-nfsv4-federated-fs-protocol-11.txt

Note: as background for this review, please review
"Requirements for Federated File Systems" published as RFC 5716
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5716.txt

  (1.a) Spencer Shepler (sshepler@microsoft.com) is the document shepherd.
  	I have reviewed the document and believe it is ready as an RFC.

  (1.b) This document and the mechanisms it represents have been
  	reviewed within and outside of the NFSv4 working group.
	The protocol defined in this I-D has been prototyped and
	a level of interoperability has already been achieved.

  (1.c) Outside of the IANA registration reviews noted below, no other
  	external review is being requested as part of this
	shepherding review.

  (1.d) The document shepherd is comfortable with the contents
  	of the I-D and the mechanisms it represents.  What comments
	or feedback provided to the document authors have been
	in addressed in this or earlier versions.

	An IPR disclosure on the FedFS documents has been made.
	From the minutes of the last NFSv4 WG meeting:

	"US 7,933,921 April 26, 2011, Referent-controlled location
	resolution of resources in a federated distributed
	system. Royalty-Free, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory
	License to All Implementers. License to be submitted to IETF
	per usual process."

	No substantive commentary has occurred on the WG alias.
	Given the licensing terms presented by Netapp, it is the
	expectation of the shepherd that the working group will
	NOT take action in response to the disclosure.

  (1.e) There is full NFSv4 working group consensus behind this document.
  	There have been no major disagreements for the lifetime of this
	document and certainly no outstanding issues.

  (1.f) There have been no discussion of appeal or discontent
  	with this I-D.

  (1.g) The document shepherd has reviewd the document with
  	the ID nits in mind.

  (1.h) The document has correctly divided references into
  	normative and informative groupings.

	A normative reference dependency does exist that is
	still "in process".  While the normative reference is
	correct, it does not block the review and approval of
	this document.  The reference is for the RFC3530bis work
	currently active within the working group (NFSv4.0).
	RFC3530bis is complete and waiting inclusion of 3 edits
	and should be ready for shepherding to AD by Sept 2011.

	An informative reference dependency exists for the
	other FedFS documents: draft-ietf-nfsv4-federated-fs-admin-09
	and draft-ietf-nfsv4-federated-fs-dns-srv-namespace-07.
	Thus these three documents need to move together through
	the publication process.

	This document and draft-ietf-nfsv4-federated-fs-admin-09
	should be reviewed together to assist in review quality.

  (1.i) An IANA section does exist.

  	Note the following IANA actions defined by this I-D:

	1) A new registry is being created "FedFS Annotation Keys"
	   with no initial entries.  The first-come-first-served
	   process from RFC5526 has been chosen for management
	   of the registry.

	2) A new registry is being created "FedFS Object Identifiers"
	   with an initial set of entries.  The RFC required process
	   has been chosen for this registry as per RFC5526.
	   Note that this registry is for an Object Identifier (OID) range.
	   The range is a subset of a "personal" registration in
	   the Internet Private Enterprise Numbers registry as
	   defined in RFC2578.

	3) Finally, a set of LDAP descriptors are being registered
	   via the process defined in RFC4520 by expert review.

  	
  (1.j) An LDAP schema is defined by this document and thus uses
  	the LDAP schema syntax defined in [RFC4512].  The I-D is
	constructed in a way as the schema may be directly extracted
	and used by the reader.

  (1.k) <announcement is as follows>

   Technical Summary

     This document describes a filesystem federation protocol that
     enables file access and namespace traversal across collections of
     independently administered fileservers.  The protocol specifies a
     set of interfaces by which fileservers with different
     administrators can form a fileserver federation that provides a
     namespace composed of the filesystems physically hosted on and
     exported by the constituent fileservers.

   Working Group Summary

     The FedFS protocol as to be used with NFSv4 file servers is an
     important component to providing enterprise usable federated
     NFSv4 file systems.  Combined with the Administration Protocol
     for Federated Filesystems, and NFSv4 protocols a complete
     solution is possible and provides substantial utility.

   Document Quality

     Not only is the NSDB Protocol for Federated Filesystems document
     complete, readable and useful as a guide to implementation and
     interoperability, this has been proven by prototype
     implementations that have been built by those authoring the
     document.  This is an important culture of the NFSv4 working
     group and has become the norm of behavior for the work product
     generated by the working group.
Back