Fred,

This is being proposed for SPC.
There are multiple types of reservations.  In an environment where one node of a cluster must join later, one of the other types can be used.  Either that or have an existing node in your cluster add the new node.  The whole intent of this Group reservation is to lock out everybody that is not explicitly specified during the reserve.  We have made provisions for adding members once the reservation exists, but only one of the reservation holders can add another entity.  The new entity cannot add itself.  This is the whole point of reservations (i.e., lock out others from doing stuff while I think I have exclusive rights).

To put it in other word's, to allow somebody to join the reservation of their own accord without permission is EXACTLY what I am trying to protect against.

Thanks,

Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-2869 / 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt@us.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/

"Knight, Frederick" <Frederick.Knight@netapp.com> 12/17/2007 01:38 PM

To Kevin D Butt/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS cc Subject RE: Persistent Reservation Proposal - Group Reservations

Sorry, you can't require everyone to register before the reserve.
 
That's like saying my whole cluster can't boot because 1 node is down.  You need
to have a way for a "down" initiator to join the fun after the fact.
 
I helped write a host cluster product that used a shared tape (failover model).  The
backup application would write to the tape.  If a system failure ever happened, the
backup application would failover to a different host.  It would skip backwards on
the tape for a few records, recognize where it left off, and then resume operation.
BUT, for some protection, we used reservations to make sure only 1 initiator at a
time could access the tape.  The interesting point however, is that we were in the
process of upgrading from old SCSI-2 RESERVE to using PR.  Because, we also
have multiple HBAs in the host, and we wanted to be able to use more than 1 of
those HBAs (so we needed multiple reservations - aka PR).  Having this idea
(group reservations) would have been a real nice addition.
 
As for the RA/AR differences.  It seemed to be timing.  Registrants Only was fairly
early on (as I remember), and so implemented by several O/S vendors.  Later on,
some issues were found (which got complicated spec-ees added to address), but also,
the All Registrants was added (which didn't have those issues).  But, since there were
implementations, it couldn't be removed like the other old PR types that no one ever
used.  Anyway, I agree, they offer basically the same capabilities, but RO is already
out there, and AR is probably what new implementers are using (it's easier to understand
and implement from the host side).  Most of the differences are already documented,
so there wouldn't be that much extra for you to write to have both types (which I think
would be better than bit somewhere - do it the same way all the others are done).  But,
you could also just do the AR version, and let someone else add the RO version if they
want it.
 
Are you proposing this for tape only? or SPC in general?  I assume SPC in general.
 
    Fred Knight
 

---

From: Kevin D Butt [mailto:kdbutt@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 9:51 AM
To: Roger Cummings
Cc: t10@t10.org
Subject: RE: Persistent Reservation Proposal - Group Reservations


Roger,

Thank you for your feedback.  I am certainly willing to entertain  other methods for accomplishing the end goal in an easier fashion.  I am not sure I understand how your proposed method makes it more backward compatible.  In my proposal PRin would show a different type of reservation and hence the application clients would not try to join the reservation because they don't know about the type.  In your proposal, application clients would not be allowed to register.  This is a deviation from what they can always do today - unless there is a resource issue.  This seems more disruptive to me.  I would assume that there would be a new additional sense code added for UNABLE TO REGISTER BECAUSE A GROUP RESERVATION IS IN PLACE (or analogous).  This would be a new thing for failure to register and there would be pain at the register point.  Perhaps that is better than at the reserve point - but I would think that it would be better handled as a reservation conflict since that is what it is instead of something the application client does not understand.

As for "all registrants" type vs. "registrants only" I didn't see where the difference would be interesting, but I am not opposed to providing a way to switch between which of these two types is done.  Whether it is additional types or some bit during registration etc.

As for some of the corner cases mentioned below, if each I_T nexus that is supposed to be part of the group reservation is required to be registered before the reservation is made, and if the reservation is released when the last group reservation participant is unregistered, then I think we don't have an issue.

I would prefer that we work together to shape a mutually beneficial proposal as opposed to have "competing" proposals.  I am willing to modify my proposal where it can be made easier and such.  I am not sold that my proposed method is the only way or even the best - it's just the way I thought of doing it.  I admit that I have always been very confused about the usefulness of RA and AR types.  They make absolutely no sense in the tape world.

Thanks,

Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-2869 / 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt@us.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/

"Roger Cummings" <roger_cummings@symantec.com> Sent by: owner-t10@t10.org 12/14/2007 12:10 PM

To Kevin D Butt/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS cc <t10@t10.org> Subject RE: Persistent Reservation Proposal - Group Reservations

Kevin,
 
First of all, let me say that I completely support what you're trying to do here. I think that providing a method in persistent reservations (PRs) to support shared access between ONLY a specifically-designated set of systems is a worthy goal, and something we should do in SPC-4.
 
Adding a set of Transport IDs to Reserve as per your document 08-024 & 08-025 is certainly possible, but it's a massive change to the way that PRs work today, and it throws up a bunch of nasty corner cases and backwards compatibility issues.
 
The massive change comes from the fact that now the Target will have to remember which registrations are in the Reservation, and which are not. It will probably have to preserve all of the transport information for the life of the reservation.
 
The corner cases are things like, what happens if there's no longer a registration that corresponds to the transport ID in the Reserve? Does the Reserve succeed? What happens if a registration comes in later, after the reservation has been established - does that device it get access?
 
Backwards compatibility issues may arise like this: An existing device registers, and finds it has no access, so it does a PR In and finds out that a reservation is in place, retries its access and still it has no access. What does it do next, preempt the reservation because it assumes the Target is broken?
 
Reserve also has to be an "atomic" command, and I've always thought that was why it's functionality is as compact as it is today. Most of the complex operations related to addresses and keys are done at registration time, and those operations don't have to be atomic.
 
One more thing: you chose for your new "group" reservations to follow the "all registrants" approach is terms of the definition of the reservation holder. While that's fine by me (obviously), I suspect there are also situations where group reservations that follow the "registrants only" approach might be useful.
 
 
The bottom line from my point of view is this: Your proposal is feasible and we can probably make it work. But I wonder if there's an easier way to achieve the same goal that is more compatible with existing practice and requires less of a change in functionality on the Target side.
 
 
What if we didn't add any new reservations types, but instead added some new functionality to the registration process? What I'm thinking of a new Register feature that causes the Target to kill all existing registrations, create the registrations identified in the transport IDs in the Register command, and not accept any future registrations. That way, we don't need any changes to Reserve, and an Initiator with existing functionality would just not be able to register and therefore would not be confused.
 
Does that make sense to you? Is there a chance this is an easier approach? If so, I'll write up a detailed proposal that's the equivalent of 08-025r0 and we can compare and contrast at the next CAP.
 
Again, thanks for getting this started, I think it's a worthwhile endeavor and I'll be glad to put some cycles towards defining this sort of functionality for SPC-4.
 
Regards,
 
 
 
 
 
Roger

---

From: owner-t10@t10.org [mailto:owner-t10@t10.org] On Behalf Of Kevin D Butt
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:18 PM
To: t10@t10.org
Subject: Persistent Reservation Proposal - Group Reservations


I have posted two documents related to an additional Persistent Reservation Type.  The first document is a presentation on where persistent reservations are today and where they fall short in the scenarios covered by the proposal.  It also covers the intent of the proposal and what will be proposed.  The second is the actual proposal
Your PDF file will be posted at:

http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.08/08-024r0.pdf
 http://www.t10.org/ftp/t10/document.08/08-025r0.pdf

Normally, the posting/archiving process takes about 30 minutes.

Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware, IBM
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-2869 / 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt@us.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/