in040473
T10/04-113r0
John Lohmeyer
April 6, 2004

INCITS T10 Annual Report
Annual Report for: T10 Technical Committee
Covering the Period: September 2003 to April 2004
Title of INCITS Subgroup: SCSI Storage Interfaces
Informal Description of Work: T10 develops standards and technical reports on storage I/O interfaces,
particularly the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI).

Links:


  1. Executive Summary

    2. T10 continues to run smoothly with 53 approved projects, of which 38 are in maintenance mode. Most of the active projects are related to the SCSI-3 family of standards. T10 membership is at 38 organizations, down from 41 last year. This decline is due largely to the weak economy.

    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, extended copy commands, 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 still suffering from a weak economy. This has adversely affected participation on standards committees and may inhibit or delay adoption of newer technologies. However, the signs that a recovery is beginning continue.

  4. Expected challenges

    5. None expected.


  5. Previous year's meetings

    6. NumberDateLocation
    #56May 7, 2003Nashua, NH
    #57July 10, 2003Colorado Springs, CO
    #58September 11, 2002Seattle, WA
    #59November 6, 2003Austin, TX
    #60January 15, 2004Chandler, AZ
    #61March 11, 2004Dana Point, 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.sffcommittee.org/

    IEEE P1394

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

    IETF SCSI over IP http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ips-charter.html

    Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) http://www.snia.org/

    ISO/IEC JTC1/SC25/WG4

    Serial ATA Working Group http://www.serialata.org/

  8. Officers and membership

    1. Officers

      2. Position

      Name

      Organization

      Training date

      Chair

      John Lohmeyer

      LSI Logic

      December 2002

      Vice Chair

      George Penokie

      IBM/Tivoli

      December 2002

      Secretary

      Ralph Weber

      ENDL Texas

      December 2002

      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), published during 2003, was the last generation of the parallel SCSI physical interface. Most manufacturers skipped this generation of parallel SCSI opting instead to go directly to a serial version of SCSI: SAS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel.

    SAS appears to be the most popular interface for direct-attach storage because it uses the same physical layer as Serial ATA. Systems integrators can build products that use either SATA or SAS disk drives, depending on cost, performance, and reliability objectives.

    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

    11. Video Projectors

    As noted last year, availability of video projectors at committee meetings is critical to having effective meetings. The situation has improved somewhat over the last year as more T10 members (including myself) are bringing video projectors to our meetings. Also, some hosts are able to supply one or two projectors for T10 usage.

    I am still 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 September 17, 2003 is $31,830.75. I assume this amount is unchanged since September 2003 as T10 has not requested any expenditure nor have additional funds been collected.

    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