IP Storage Working Group                              Prasenjit Sarkar
Internet Draft                                                     IBM
Document: draft-ietf-ips-iscsi-boot-08.txt             Duncan Missimer
Category: Standards Track                            Rhapsody Networks
                                                Constantin Sapuntzakis
                                                   Stanford University
                                                       6 November 2002


             Bootstrapping Clients using the iSCSI Protocol

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft
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   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   The words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY" and "OPTIONAL" in this
   documents are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Abstract

   iSCSI is a proposed transport protocol for SCSI that operates on top
   of TCP.  This memo describes a standard mechanism to enable clients
   to bootstrap themselves using the iSCSI protocol.  The goal of this
   standard is to enable iSCSI boot clients to obtain the information to
   open an iSCSI session with the iSCSI boot server.

1. Introduction

   The Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) is a popular family of
   protocols for communicating with I/O devices, especially storage
   devices.  SCSI can be characterized as a request/response messaging
   protocol with a standard architecture and componentized command sets
   for different device classes.




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   iSCSI is a proposed transport protocol for SCSI that operates on top
   of TCP.  The role of iSCSI is necessitated by the evolution of the
   system interconnect from a shared bus to a switched network.  IP
   networks meet the architectural and performance requirements of
   transporting SCSI, paving the way for the iSCSI protocol.

   Many diskless clients sometimes bootstrap off remote SCSI devices.
   Such diskless entities are lightweight, space-efficient and power-
   conserving, and are increasingly popular in various environments.

   This memo describes a standard mechanism to enable clients to
   bootstrap themselves using the iSCSI protocol.  The goal of this
   standard is to enable iSCSI boot clients to obtain the information to
   open an iSCSI session with the iSCSI boot server. It is possible that
   all the information is not available at the very outset, so the memo
   describes steps to obtain the information required to bootstrap
   clients off an iSCSI boot server.

2. Requirements

   1. There must be no restriction of network topology between the iSCSI
   boot client and the boot server other than those in effect for
   establishing the iSCSI session. Consequently, it is possible for an
   iSCSI boot client to boot from an iSCSI boot server behind gateways
   or firewalls as long as it is possible to establish an iSCSI session
   between the client and the server.

   2. The following represents the minimum information required for an
   iSCSI boot client to contact an iSCSI boot server: (a) the client's
   IP address (IPv6 or IPv4); (b) the server's iSCSI Target Name; and
   (c) mandatory iSCSI initiator capability.

   The above assumes that the default LUN for the boot process is 0 and
   the default port for the iSCSI boot server is the well-known iSCSI
   port. However, both may be overridden at the time of configuration.

   Additional information may be required at each stage of the boot
   process.

   3. It is possible for the iSCSI boot client to have none of the above
   information or capability on starting.

   4. The client should be able to complete boot without user
   intervention (for boots that occur during an unattended power-up).
   However, there should be a mechanism for the user to input values so
   as to bypass stages of the boot protocol.

   5. Additional protocol software (for example, DHCP) may be necessary



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   if the minimum information required for an iSCSI session is not
   provided.

3. Related Work

   The Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) [Finlayson84] through
   the extensions defined in the Dynamic RARP (DRARP)) [Brownell96]
   explicitly addresses the problem of network address discovery, and
   includes an automatic IP address assignment mechanism.  The Trivial
   File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) [Sollins81] provides for transport of a
   boot image from a boot server. BOOTP [Croft85, Reynolds93, Wimer93]
   is a transport mechanism for a collection of configuration
   information.  BOOTP is also extensible, and official extensions have
   been defined for several configuration parameters.  DHCPv4 [Droms97,
   Droms93] and DHCPv6 [Bound02] are standards for hosts to be
   dynamically configured in an IP network.  The Service Location
   Protocol (SLP) provides for location of higher level services
   [Guttman99].

4. Software stage

   Some iSCSI boot clients may lack the resources to boot up with the
   mandatory iSCSI initiator capability. Such boot clients may choose to
   obtain iSCSI initiator software from a boot server.  Currently, there
   are many established protocols that allow such a service to enable
   clients to load software images. For example, BOOTP and DHCP servers
   have the capability to provide software images on requests from boot
   clients.

   It is to be noted that this document does not recommend any of the
   above protocols, and the final decision of which boot protocol is to
   be used to load iSCSI initiator software is left to the discretion of
   the implementor.


5. DHCP stage

   In order to use an iSCSI boot server, the following pieces of
   information are required for an ISCSI boot client.

   - The IP address of the iSCSI boot client (IPv4 or IPv6)

   - The IP transport endpoint for the iSCSI Target Port for the iSCSI
   boot server.  If the transport is TCP, for example, this has to
   resolve to an IP address and a TCP port number. TCP is currently the
   only transport approved for iSCSI.

   - The eight-byte LUN structure identifying the Logical Unit within



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   the iSCSI boot server.

   At boot time, all or none of this information may be stored in the
   iSCSI boot client. This section describes techniques for obtaining
   the required information via the DHCP stage. Otherwise, if the iSCSI
   boot client has all the information, the boot client may proceed
   directly to the Boot stage.

   An iSCSI boot client which does not know its IP address at power-on
   may acquire its IP address via DHCP.  An iSCSI boot client which is
   capable of using both DHCPv6 and DHCPv4 should first attempt to use
   DHCPv6 to obtain its IP address, falling back on DHCPv4 in the event
   of failure.

   Unless otherwise specified here, DHCP fields such as the client ID
   and gateway information are used in an identical way as applications
   other than iSCSI do.

   A DHCP server (v4 or v6) MAY instruct an iSCSI client how to reach
   its boot device. This is done using the variable length DHCP option
   named Root Path. The use of the option field is reserved for iSCSI
   boot use by prefacing the string with "iscsi:".

   The option field consists of an UTF-8 [Yergeau98] string. The string
   MUST contain only alphanumberic characters, "." , ":" and "-"; no
   other characters are permissible. The string has the following
   composition:

   "iscsi:"<servername>":"<protocol>":"<port>":"<LUN>":"<targetname>

   The fields "servername", "port", "protocol" and "LUN" are OPTIONAL
   and should be left blank if there are no corresponding values. The
   "targetname" field is not optional and MUST be provided.

   The "servername" is the name of iSCSI server and contains either a
   valid domain name, a literal IPv4 address, or a literal IPv6 address.

   If the "servername" field contains a literal IPv4 address, the IPv4
   address MUST be in standard dotted decimal notation as defined in
   Section 2.1 of RFC 1123 [Braden89].

   If the "servername" field contains an IPv6 address, the address MUST
   be represented in the IPv6 address format x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x where the
   'x's are the hexadecimal values of the eight 16-bit pieces of the
   address. Note that this format representation is specific to iSCSI
   boot.

   If the "servername" is a domain name, the name MUST be a fully



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   qualified domain name (FQDN) and should abide by the rules specified
   in Sections 3.1 and 3.5 of RFC 1034 [Mockaopetris87] and the reply
   from the host configuration server should contain the Domain Name
   Server Option [Alexander93].  It must also be pointed out that the
   use of DNS for address translation in enterprise environments must
   contain adequate levels of fault tolerance and security.

   If the "servername" field contains 4 decimal components, the
   "servername" is assumed to be an IPv4 address. If there are more than
   4 decimal components or if there is a hexadecimal component, the the
   "servername" is assumed to be an IPv6 address. If the least
   significant (rightmost) component is an approved domain extension,
   then the "servername" field is assumed to be a domain name.  If the
   "servername" field is left blank, then no default value is assumed in
   its place.

   The "protocol" field is the decimal representation of the IANA-
   approved string for the trasport protocol to be used for iSCSI. If
   the protocol field is left bank, the default value is assumed to be
   "6" for TCP.  The transport protocol MUST have been approved for use
   in iSCSI; currently, the only approved protocol is TCP.

   The "port" is the decimal representation of the port on which the
   iSCSI boot server is listening. If not specified, the port defaults
   to the well-known iSCSI port.

   The "LUN" field is a hexadecimal representation of the LU number.  If
   the LUN field is blank, then LUN 0 is assumed. If the LUN field is
   not blank, the representation MUST be divided into four groups of
   four hexadecimal digits, separated by "-". Digits above 9 may be
   either lower or upper case.  An example of such a representation
   would be 4752-3A4F-6b7e-2F99.  For the sake of brevity, at most three
   leading zero ("0") digits MAY be omitted in any group of hexadecimal
   digits. Thus, the "LUN" representation 6734-9-156f-127 is equivalent
   to 6734-0009-156f-0127.  Furthermore, trailing groups containing only
   the "0" digit MAY be omitted along with the preceding "-". So, the
   "LUN" representation 4186-9 is equivalent to 4186-0009-0000-0000.
   Other concise representations of the LUN field MUST NOT be used.

   Note that SCSI targets are allowed to present different LU numberings
   for different SCSI initiators, so that to our knowledge nothing
   precludes a SCSI target from exporting several different LUs to
   several different SCSI initiators as their respective LUN 0s.

   The "targetname" field is an iSCSI Name that is defined by the iSCSI
   standard [Satran02] to uniquely identify an iSCSI target.

   If the "servername" field is provided by DHCP, then that field is



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   used in conjunction with other associated fields to contact the boot
   server in the Boot stage (Section 7).  However, if the "servername"
   field is not provided, then the "targetname" field is then used in
   the Discovery Service stage in conjunction with other associated
   fields.  (Section 6).


6. Discovery Service stage

   This stage is required if the DHCP server (v4 or v6) is unaware of
   any iSCSI boot servers or if the DHCP server is unable to provide the
   minimum information required to connect to the iSCSI boot server
   other than the targetname.

   The discovery service is based on the SLP protocol [Guttman99,
   Bakke02] and is an instantiation of the SLP Service or Directory
   Agent.

   The iSCSI boot client may have obtained the targetname of the iSCSI
   boot server in the DHCP stage (Section 5). In that case, the iSCSI
   boot client queries the Discovery Service using query string 1 of the
   iSCSI Target Concrete Service Type Template as specified in Section
   6.2 of the iSCSI SLP interaction document [Bakke02] to resolve the
   targetname to an IP address and port number. Once this is obtained,
   the iSCSI boot client proceeds to the Boot stage (Section 7).

   It is possible that the port number obtained from the Discovery
   Service may conflict with the one obtained from the DHCP service. In
   such a case, the implementor has the option to try both port numbers
   in the Boot stage.

   If the iSCSI boot client does not have any targetname information,
   the iSCSI boot client then may query the Discovery Service with query
   string 4 of the iSCSI Target Concrete Service Type Template as
   specified in Section 6.2 of the iSCSI SLP interaction document
   [Bakke02]. In response to this query, the discovery service provides
   the boot client with a list of iSCSI boot servers the boot client is
   allowed to access.

   If the list of iSCSI boot servers is empty, subsequent actions are
   left to the discretion of the implementor. Otherwise, the iSCSI boot
   client may contact any iSCSI boot server in the list. Moreover, the
   order in which iSCSI boot servers are contacted is also left to the
   discretion of the implementor.

7. Boot stage

   Once the iSCSI boot client has obtained the minimum information to



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   open an iSCSI session with the iSCSI boot server, the actual booting
   process can start.

   The actual sequence of iSCSI commands needed to complete the boot
   process is left to the implementor. This was done because of varying
   requirements from different vendors and equipment, making it
   difficult to specify a common subset of the iSCSI standard that would
   be acceptable to everybody.

   The iSCSI session established for boot may be taken over by the
   booted software in the iSCSI boot client.

8. Security Considerations


   The security discussion is centered around each stage of the iSCSI
   boot process.

   The software stage can be secured by using public key encryption and
   digitial signatures. This is the approach taken by the popular PXE
   boot framework.

   With regards to the DHCP stage, securing the host configuration
   protocol is beyond the scope of this document. Authentication of DHCP
   messages is described in [Droms01].

   The security issues in the Discovery Service stage are addressed by
   public key ciphering as stated in the the SLP version 2 document
   [Guttman99].

   For the Boot stage, the iSCSI standard supports various methods of
   authentication and encryption for transport security [Satran02]. The
   means to configure the security parameters of an iSCSI boot client is
   beyond the scope of this document.

   The iSCSI boot service may be subjected to denial of service attacks.
   The use of IPSEC as mandated by the iSCSI standard [Satran02] can be
   used to protect against such attacks. However, ARP is still
   vulnerable to such type of attacks.

   Security in the Boot stage is also dependent on the verification of
   the boot image being loaded.  One key difference between the iSCSI
   boot mechanism and BOOTP-based image loading is the fact that the
   identity of a boot image may not be known when the Boot stage starts.
   The identity of certain boot images and their locations are known
   only after examining the contents of a boot disk exposed by the iSCSI
   boot service. Furthermore, images themselves may recursively load
   other images based on both hardware configurations and user input.



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   Consequently, a practical way to verify loaded boot images is to make
   sure that each image loading software verify the image to be loaded
   using a mechanism of their choice.

   Another point to be noted is that if a boot image inherits an iSCSI
   session from a previously loaded boot image, the boot image also
   inherts the security properties of the iSCSI session.

Acknowledgments

   We wish to thank John Hufferd for taking the initiative to form the
   iSCSI boot team. We also wish to thank Doug Otis, Julian Satran,
   Bernard Aboba, David Robinson, Mark Bakke and Mallikarjun Chadalapaka
   for helpful suggestions and pointers regarding the draft document.

Normative References

   [Alexander93] Alexander, S., and R. Droms, "DHCP Options and BOOTP
   Vendor
          Extensions", RFC 2132, Lachman Technology, Inc., Bucknell
          University, October 1993.

   [Bakke02] Bakke, M., et al. "Finding iSCSI Targets and Name Servers
   using SLP", Work in Progress, March 2002.

   [Bound02] Bound, J., Canney, M., and Perkins, C., "Dynamic Host
   Configuration
        Protocol for IPv6", Work in Progress, June 2002.

   [Braden89] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
   and Support", RFC 1123, October 1989.

   [Bradner96] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process --
         Revision 3", RFC 2026, October 1996.

   [Bradner97] Bradner, S. "Key Words for use in RFCs to indicate
   Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997.

   [Croft85] Croft, B., and J. Gilmore, "Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP)",
   RFC 951,
          Stanford and SUN Microsystems, September 1985.

   [Droms93] Droms, D., "Interoperation between DHCP and BOOTP" RFC
   1534,
          Bucknell University, October 1993.

   [Droms97] R. Droms, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131,
          Bucknell University, March 1997.



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   [Droms01] Droms, R., Arbaugh, W., "Authentication for DHCP Messages",
   RFC 3118, June 2001.

   [Guttman99] Guttman, E., Perkins, C., Verizades, J., Day, M.,
   "Service Location Protocol v2", RFC 2608, June 1999.

   [Mockaopetris87] Mockaopertis, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and
   Facilities", RFC 1034, November 1987.

   [Reynolds93] Reynolds, J., "BOOTP Vendor Information Extensions", RFC
   1497,
          USC/Information Sciences Institute, August 1993.

   [Satran02] Satran, J. et al., "iSCSI", Work in Progress, September
   2002.

   [Yergeau98] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8: A Transformation Format for
   ISO-10646", RFC 2279, January 1998.

   [Wimer93] Wimer, W., "Clarifications and Extensions for the Bootstrap
   Protocol", RFC 1532, Carnegie Mellon University, October 1993.

Informative References

   [Brownell96] Brownell, D, "Dynamic RARP extensions for Automatic
   Network Adress
          Acquisition", RFC 1931, SUN Microsystems, April 1996.

   [Finlayson84] Finlayson, R., Mann, T., Mogul, J., and M. Theimer, "A
   Reverse
          Address Resolution Protocol", RFC 903, Stanford, June 1984.

   [Sollins81] Sollins, K., "The TFTP Protocol (Revision 2)",  RFC 783,
   NIC,
          June 1981.


Authors' Addresses

   Prasenjit Sarkar
   IBM Almaden Research Center
   650 Harry Road
   San Jose, CA 95120, USA
   Phone: +1 408 927 1417
   Email: psarkar@almaden.ibm.com

   Duncan Missimer
   Rhapsody Networks



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   3450 W Warren Avenue,
   Fremont, CA 94538, USA
   Phone: +1 510 743 3095
   Email: dmissimer@rhapsodynetworks.com

   Constantine Sapuntzakis
   Stanford University
   353 Serra Hall #406
   Stanford, CA 94306, USA
   Phone: +1 650 520 0205
   Email: csapuntz@stanford.edu


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