IT/02-____
T10/02-402r0
John Lohmeyer
October 9, 2002

INCITS T10 Annual Report
Annual Report for: T10 Technical Committee
Covering the Period: October 2001 to October 2002
Title of INCITS Subgroup: Lower Level Interfaces
Informal Description of Work: T10 develops standards and technical reports on I/O interfaces, particularly the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI).

Links:

  1. Executive Summary

    2. T10 continues to run smoothly with 55 approved projects, of which 32 are in maintenance mode. Most of the active projects are related to the SCSI-3 family of standards. T10 membership is stable at 46 organizations.

    Over the last few years, there has been increasing interest in attaching more storage devices over longer distances using interfaces such as Fibre Channel, the Internet (e.g., iSCSI), and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). These larger topologies have required some enhancements in the SCSI architecture and the command sets (e.g., access controls, globally unique identifiers, persistent reservations, etc.). This has also led to organizations joining T10 that have not previously participated (e.g., Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco Systems).

  2. Significant accomplishments


  3. Significant challenges

    4. The computer industry is suffering from a weak economy. This has adversely affected participation on standards committees and may inhibit or delay adoption of newer technologies.

  4. Expected challenges

    5. None expected.

  5. Previous year's meetings

    6. NumberDateLocation
    #46November 8, 2001Monterey, CA
    #47January 17, 2002Houston, TX
    #48March 14, 2002Dallas, TX
    #49May 2, 2002Nashua, NH
    #50July 18, 2002Colorado Springs, CO
    #51September 12, 2002Minneapolis, MN
    #52November 7, 2002Huntington Beach, CA

  6. Next year's meetings

    7. http://www.t10.org/meeting.htm

  7. Liaison activities

    8. INCITS T11 http://www.t11.org/

    INCITS T13 http://www.t13.org/

    SFF Committee http://www.sff.org/

    IEEE P1394

    SCSI Trade Association (STA) http://www.scsita.org/

    IETF SCSI over IP

    Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)

    ISO/IEC JTC1/SC25/WG4

  8. Officers and membership

    1. Officers

      2. Position

      Name

      Organization

      Training date

      Chair

      John Lohmeyer

      LSI Logic

      October 2000

      Vice Chair

      George Penokie

      IBM/Tivoli

      May 1996

      Secretary

      Ralph Weber

      ENDL Texas

      March 1999

      International Representative

      Gary Robinson

      EMC

      May 2002

      Vocabulary Representative

      open

       

       

    2. Membership

    http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/members.txt

  9. Future trends

    10. SPI-5 (a.k.a., Ultra640 SCSI) will likely be the last generation of the parallel SCSI physical interface. Products that previously used the parallel SCSI physical interface while migrate to serial interfaces such as SAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel. Because SAS uses the same physical layer as Serial ATA, SAS is expected to be the logical upgrade to the Serial ATA disk drives.

    The SCSI command sets are evolving to encompass the latest developments in storage (e.g., much larger address spaces, DVDs, CD-Recordable devices, and array controllers) as well as refinements to deal with current interconnect issues (e.g., network storage, security, and power management).

  10. Other administrative information

Obsolete Standards

T10 has requested that withdrawn standards be listed on the INCITS web site along with information on how to obtain copies of withdrawn standards. This will make it more palatable to recommend withdrawal of obsolete standards.

Video Projectors

Availability of video projectors at T10 meeting weeks is becoming critical to having effective meetings. We depend on members bringing their personal projectors to meetings as meeting hosts cannot afford to rent video projectors from hotels. This has occasionally resulted in less-productive meetings due to the lack of a video projector.

I am requesting that INCITS consider ways to address this problem. One possible solution would be for INCITS to purchase a few video projectors that could be loaned to subgroups for specific meetings.

Financial Statement

The INCITS Secretariat maintains an escrow account on T10's behalf to pay for technical editing services. See the T10 Procedure for Funding Technical Editors http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.95/95-148r0.pdf for details of how this account is administered. The current account balance as of October 8, 2002 is $31,830.75.

T10 Internal Procedures

The T10 internal procedures are as follows:

ProcedureURL
T10 Standards Development Policies and Procedures http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.00/00-283r1.pdf
T10 Electronic Procedures http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.95/95-146r2.pdf
T10 Procedure for Funding Technical Editors http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.95/95-148r0.pdf
T10 Document Retention Policy http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.98/98-107r1.pdf
T10 Plenary Meetings & Accompanying Meeting Weeks http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.00/00-221r2.pdf