Internet Engineering Task Force                                  J. Haas
Internet-Draft                                          Juniper Networks
Intended status: Informational                              May 26, 2015
Expires: November 27, 2015


                   I2RS Ephemeral State Requirements
                draft-haas-i2rs-ephemeral-state-reqs-00

Abstract

   This document covers requests to the netmod and netconf Working
   Groups for functionality to support the ephemeral state requirements
   to implement the I2RS architecture.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 27, 2015.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Ephemeral State Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.3.  Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Changes to YANG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Changes to NETCONF  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Identity, Secondary-Identity Requirements; Priority
       Requirements; Implications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.1.  Identity Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.2.  Priority Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.3.  Representing I2RS Attributes in ephemeral
           configuration state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Subscriptions to Changed State Requirements . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Previously Considered Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     7.1.  A Separate Ephemeral Datastore  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     7.2.  Panes of Glass/Overlay  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  Actions Required to Implement this Draft  . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   11. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   12. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   The Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) Working Group is chartered
   with providing architecture and mechanisms to inject into and
   retrieve information from the routing system.  The I2RS Architecture
   document [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture] abstractly documents a number
   of requirements for implementing the I2RS requirements.

   The I2RS Working Group has chosen to use the YANG data modeling
   language [RFC6020] as the basis to implement its mechanisms.

   Additionally, the I2RS Working group has chosen to use the NETCONF
   [RFC6241] and its similar but lighter-weight relative RESTCONF
   [I-D.bierman-netconf-restconf] as the protocols for carrying I2RS.

   While YANG, NETCONF and RESTCONF are a good starting basis for I2RS,
   there are some things needed from each of them in order for I2RS to
   be implemented.







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2.  Ephemeral State Requirements

2.1.  Persistence

   I2RS requires ephemeral state; i.e. state that does not persist
   across reboots.  If state must be restored, it should be done solely
   by replay actions from the I2RS client via the I2RS agent.

   While at first glance this may seem equivalent to the writable-
   running datastore in NETCONF, running-config can be copied to a
   persistant data store, like startup config.  I2RS ephemeral state
   MUST NOT be persisted.

2.2.  Constraints

   Ephemeral state MAY refer to non-ephemeral state for purposes of
   implementing constraints.  The designer of ephemeral state modules
   are advised that such constraints may impact the speed of processing
   ephemeral state commits and should avoid them when speed is
   essential.

   Non-ephemeral state MUST NOT refer to ephemeral state for constraint
   purposes; it SHALL be considered a validation error if it does.

2.3.  Hierarchy

   Similar to configuration state (config true, see [RFC6020], section
   7.19.1), ephemeral state is not permitted to be configured underneath
   nodes that are "config false" (state data).

   Configuration of ephemeral state underneath "config true" is
   permitted.  This permits augmentation of configuration state with
   ephemeral nodes.

   Configuration of "config true" state underneath ephemeral state MUST
   NOT be done.

   State data, "config false", is permitted underneath ephemeral state.
   (XXX JMH - should there be a requirement that such state data be part
   of an ephemeral module and perhaps become similarly inaccessible if
   the ephemeral module reboots?)

3.  Changes to YANG

   The YANG "config" keyword ([RFC6020], section 7.19.1) is extended to
   support the keyword "ephemeral" in addition to "true" and "false".
   "config ephemeral" declares the nodes underneath to be ephemeral
   configuration.



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4.  Changes to NETCONF

   A capability is registered declaring that the server supports
   ephemeral configuration.  E.g.:

   :ephemeral-config
       urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:ephemeral-config:1.0

   <get-config> will normally return "config ephemeral" nodes as it is a
   form of configuration.  It is further extended to add a new
   parameter, "filter-ephemeral".  This parameter accepts the following
   arguments:

   o  none (default): No filtering of persistent or ephemeral state is
      done.
   o  ephemeral-only: Only nodes representing ephemeral state are
      returned.
   o  exclude-ephemeral: Only persistent configuration is returned.

   <get> is similarly extended to support "filter-ephemeral".

   When a <copy-config> is done, regardless of datastore, nodes that are
   "config ephemeral" are excluded from the target output.

5.  Identity, Secondary-Identity Requirements; Priority Requirements;
    Implications

5.1.  Identity Requirements

   I2RS requires clients to have an identity.  This identity will be
   used by the Agent authentication mechanism over the appropriate
   protocol.

   I2RS also permits clients to have a secondary identity which may be
   used for troubleshooting.  This secondary identity is an opaque
   value.  [I-D.ietf-i2rs-traceability] provides an example of how the
   secondary identity can be used for traceability.

   The secondary identity is carried in the configuration operation
   using a new parameter to <edit-config>.  E.g.:











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  <rpc message-id="101" xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
      <edit-config>
      <i2rs:irs-secondary-identity>user1</i2rs>
      <target>
          <running/>
      </target>
      <config>
          <top xmlns="http://example.com/schema/1.2/config">
          <interface>
              <name>Ethernet0/0</name>
              <mtu>1500</mtu>
          </interface>
          </top>
      </config>
      </edit-config>
  </rpc>

   "config ephemeral" nodes that are created or altered as part of the
   config operation will carry the secondary-identity as read-only
   metadata.

5.2.  Priority Requirements

   To support Multi-Headed Control, I2RS requires that there be a
   decidable means of arbitrating the correct state of data when
   multiple clients attempt to manipulate the same piece of data.  This
   is done via a priority mechanism with the highest priority winning.
   This priority may vary on a per-node or sub-tree basis based for a
   given identity.

   This further implies that priority is an attribute that is stored in
   the NETCONF Access Control Model [RFC6536] as part of a rule-list.
   E.g.:


















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   +--rw rule-list [name]
      +--rw name     string
      +--rw group*   union
      +--rw rule [name]
         +--rw name string
         +--rw module-name?  union
         +--rw (rule-type)?
         |  +--:(protocol-operation)
         |  |  +--rw rpc-name?  union
         |  +--:(notification)
         |  |  +--rw notification-name?  union
         |  +--:(data-node)
         |     +--rw path node-instance-identifier
         +--rw access-operations?  union
         +--rw action action-type
         +--rw comment?  string
         +--rw i2rs:i2rs-priority i2rs-priority-type

   Ephemeral configuration state nodes that are created or altered by
   users that match a rule carrying i2rs-priority will have those nodes
   annotated with metadata.  Additionally, during commit processing, if
   nodes are found where i2rs-priority is already present, and the
   priority is better than the transaction's user's priority for that
   node, the commit SHALL fail.  An appropriate error should be returned
   to the user stating the nodes where the user had insufficient
   priority to override the state.

5.3.  Representing I2RS Attributes in ephemeral configuration state

   I2RS attributes may be modeled as meta-data,
   [I-D.ietf-netmod-yang-metadata].  This meta-data MUST be read-only;
   operations attempting to alter it MUST be silently ignored.  An I2RS
   module will be defined to document this meta data.  An example of its
   use:

   <foo xmlns:i2rs="https://ietf.example.com/i2rs"
        i2rs:i2rs-secondary-identity="user1" i2rs:i2rs-priority="47">
       ...
   </foo>

6.  Subscriptions to Changed State Requirements

   I2RS clients require the ability to monitor changes to ephemeral
   state.  While subscriptions are well defined for receiving
   notifications, the need to create a notification set for all
   ephemeral configuration state may be overly burdensome to the user.





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   There is thus a need for a general subscription mechanism that can
   provide notification of changed state, with sufficient information to
   permit the client to retrieve the impacted nodes.  This should be
   doable without requiring the notifications to be created as part of
   every single I2RS module.

7.  Previously Considered Ideas

7.1.  A Separate Ephemeral Datastore

   The primary advantage of a fully separate datastore is that the
   semantics of its contents are always clearly ephemeral.  It also
   provides strong segregation of I2RS configuration and operational
   state from the rest of the system within the network element.

   The most obvious disadvantage of such a fully separate datastore is
   that interaction with the network element's operational or
   configuration state becomes significantly more difficult.  As an
   example, a BGP I2RS use case would be the dynamic instantiation of a
   BGP peer.  While it is readily possible to re-use any defined
   groupings from an IETF-standardized BGP module in such an I2RS
   ephemeral datastore's modules, one cannot currently reference state
   from one datastore to another.

   For example, XPath queries are done in the context document of the
   datastore in question and thus it is impossible for an I2RS model to
   fulfil a "must" or "when" requirement in the BGP module in the
   standard data stores.  To implement such a mechanism would require
   appropriate semantics for XPath.

7.2.  Panes of Glass/Overlay

   I2RS ephemeral configuration state is generally expected to be
   disjoint from persistent configuration.  In some cases, extending
   persistent configuration with ephemeral attributes is expected to be
   useful.  A case that is considered potentially useful but problematic
   was explored was the ability to "overlay" persistent configuration
   with ephemeral configuration.

   In this overlay scenario, persistent configuration that was not
   shadowed by ephemeral configuration could be "read through".

   There were two perceived disadvantages to this mechanism:

   1.  The general complexity with managing the overlay mechanism
       itself.





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   2.  Consistency issues with validation should the ephemeral state be
       lost, perhaps on reboot.  In such a case, the previously shadowed
       persistent state may no longer validate.

8.  Actions Required to Implement this Draft

   o  Draft for adding "config ephemeral" to YANG.
   o  Draft defining NETCONF changes including capability, RPC operation
      changes and support of secondary identity, RPC changes to support
      priority.
   o  I2RS draft to define meta-data for priority and secondary-
      identity.

9.  IANA Considerations

   TBD

10.  Security Considerations

   TBD

11.  Acknowledgements

   This document is an attempt to distill lengthy conversations on the
   I2RS mailing list for an architecture that was for a long period of
   time a moving target.  Some individuals in particular warrant
   specific mention for their extensive help in providing the basis for
   this document:

   o  Alia Atlas
   o  Andy Bierman
   o  Martin Bjorklund
   o  Dean Bogdanavich
   o  Rex Fernando
   o  Joel Halpern
   o  Susan Hares
   o  Thomas Nadeau
   o  Juergen Schoenwaelder
   o  Kent Watsen

12.  Normative References

   [I-D.bierman-netconf-restconf]
              Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., Watsen, K., and R. Fernando,
              "RESTCONF Protocol", draft-bierman-netconf-restconf-04
              (work in progress), February 2014.





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   [I-D.ietf-i2rs-architecture]
              Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
              Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
              System", draft-ietf-i2rs-architecture-05 (work in
              progress), July 2014.

   [I-D.ietf-i2rs-traceability]
              Clarke, J., Salgueiro, G., and C. Pignataro, "Interface to
              the Routing System (I2RS) Traceability: Framework and
              Information Model", draft-ietf-i2rs-traceability-02 (work
              in progress), March 2015.

   [I-D.ietf-netmod-yang-metadata]
              Lhotka, L., "Defining and Using Metadata with YANG",
              draft-ietf-netmod-yang-metadata-00 (work in progress),
              April 2015.

   [I-D.rfernando-i2rs-yang-mods]
              Fernando, R., pals, p., Madhayyan, M., and A. Clemm, "YANG
              modifications for I2RS", draft-rfernando-i2rs-yang-mods-00
              (work in progress), February 2013.

   [RFC6020]  Bjorklund, M., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for the
              Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6020,
              October 2010.

   [RFC6241]  Enns, R., Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., and A.
              Bierman, "Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC
              6241, June 2011.

   [RFC6242]  Wasserman, M., "Using the NETCONF Protocol over Secure
              Shell (SSH)", RFC 6242, June 2011.

   [RFC6536]  Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "Network Configuration
              Protocol (NETCONF) Access Control Model", RFC 6536, March
              2012.

Author's Address

   Jeffrey Haas
   Juniper Networks

   Email: jhaas@juniper.net








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