IPFC Working Group M. Rajagopal, R. Bhagwat, W. Rickard INTERNET-DRAFT Gadzoox Networks Elizabeth Rodriguez (Expires September 10, 2000) Lucent Technologies Fibre Channel Over IP Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as Reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress''. The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/lid-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html 1. Abstract Fibre Channel(FC) is a dominant technology used in Storage Area networks (SAN). The purpose of this draft specification is to specify a standard way of encapsulating FC frames over IP and to describe mechanisms that allow islands of FC SANs to interoperate over IP networks. FC over IP relies on IP network services to provide the connectivity between the SAN islands. The FC over IP specification is independent of the link level transport protocol such as Gigabit Ethernet, SONET, ATM, or DWDM, used for carrying the IP packets. 2. Conventions used in this document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [2]. 3. Introduction Fibre Channel (FC) is a gigabit speed networking technology primarily used for Storage Area Networking (SAN). FC is standardized under Rajagopal, et al. [Page 1] Internet-Draft Fibre Channel over IP March 2000 American National Standard for Information Systems of the National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) and has specified a number of documents describing its protocols, operations, and services. With the rapid growth of IP-based networks, it has become important to specify a standard way to encapsulate FC frames over IP. The primary motivation for this specification therefore is to use the existing IP infrastructure to carry FC over LANs, MANs, and WANs. FC Standards [3] describes the operation and interaction of FC Switches. Two distinct levels of switch interconnections are specified. Autonomous Regions (AR) are defined to allow clusters of FC Switches to be connected across a backbone network called a DMP- backbone. An AR is administratively defined with each AR encompassing one or more FC Address Domains. The DMP-backbone network is formed from one or more Backbone Switches (BSW) that run the DMP routing and switch control protocol. DMP is based on OSPF. Currently, the DMP protocol is specified for only point-to-point links. But a BSW may have a number of such point-to- point neighbors. In general, there are 3 main concerns when FC is transported over any packet or physical technologies: - Security - Data Integrity (loss, out-of-order) - Performance (QoS) This draft addresses the above concerns when IP is used as the packet media to carry FC utilizing its underlying network services. As such, any of the protocols that make the IP transport secure (e.g., IPsec, VPN) or boost the performance of IP networks (e.g., DiffServ) may be relevant. 4. FC over IP Proposed Overview This document specifies an IP encapsulation mechanism for the FC frames traversing the DMP backbone. Therefore, it specifically applies to the FC Switching configuration with multiple ARs. As specified in [3], native FC frames traverse the DMP backbone between DMP neighbors on point-to-point links. In this specification, the native FC frames are first encapsulated which then traverse the IP network. From the perspective of each BSW, all remote BSWs would appear to be connected to the BSW on point-to-point links. The DMP routing protocol computation would make the network topology appear as a fully connected mesh. Encapsulated FC frames are routed on the IP network according to the normal IP routing procedures. In this mode, the DMP routing protocol lays over the IP network and has no knowledge of the underlying IP protocol or the underlying technology that carries the IP datagrams. Rajagopal, et al. [Page 2] Internet-Draft Fibre Channel over IP March 2000 In the beginning, every BSW is configured with an IP address and a list of all participating BSW IP addresses is known. FC addresses and IP addresses associations of all BSWs can be statically configured or dynamically learnt from the DMP routing protocol. New BSWs are allowed to join and it is assumed that the joining BSW has knowledge of the IP addresses of the BSWs currently in operation. The following are placeholders for future topics in this document: 5. FC IP Encapsulation 6. FC and IP Address Association Mechanism 7. BSW Joins 8. Security Considerations 9. Data Integrity Considerations 10. Performance Considerations 11. References: 1 Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. 2 Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 3 NCITS 321-200x (ANSI) T11/Project 1305-D/Rev4.3 "Fibre Channel Switch-Fabric-2", March 2000 (www.t11.org) 12. Acknowledgments 13. Authors' Addresses Murali Rajagopal Gadzoox Networks, Inc. 711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100 Placentia, CA 92870 Phone: +1 714 577 6805 Fax: +1 714 524 8508 Email: murali@gadzoox.com Raj Bhagwat Gadzoox Networks, Inc. 711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100 Rajagopal, et al. [Page 3] Internet-Draft Fibre Channel over IP March 2000 Placentia, CA 92870 Phone: +1 714 577 6806 Fax: +1 714 524 8508 Email: raj@gadzoox.com Wayne Rickard Gadzoox Networks, Inc. 711 Kimberly Avenue, Suite 100 Placentia, CA 92870 Phone: +1 714 577 6803 Fax: +1 714 524 8508 Email: wayne@gadzoox.com Elizabeth G. Rodriguez Lucent Technologies 1202 Richardson Drive, Suite 210 Richardson, TX 75080 Phone: 972-231-0672 Email: egrodriguez@lucent.com Full Copyright Statement "Copyright (C) The Internet Society (date). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into [draft-ietf-ipfc-fcoverip-00.txt] [This INTERNET DRAFT expires on September 10, 2000] Rajagopal, et al. [Page 4]