[Federated-fs] FedFS Meeting Minutes, 9/4/2008

[James Lentini]

FedFS Meeting Minutes, 9/4/2008
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Attendees
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Dan Ellard (BBN)
Renu Tewari (IBM/ARC)
Robert Thurlow (Sun)
Paul Lemahieu (EMC)
Manoj Naik (IBM/ARC)
James Lentini (NetApp)
Amy Weaver (NetApp)
Mario Wurzl (EMC)

Minutes
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+ LDAP transactions

  Mario will report back on this topic at the end of the month.

+ Root Fileset

  Q. What is the problem that the root fileset discussion is trying to solve?
  A. If you mount one of a set of root servers, customers want to see a common 
     and consistent namespace. 

  Q. Would the root fileset mechanism be unnecessary given a fileset replication
     protocol?

  A. If there was a replication protocol, the fileset would be replicated to 
     other servers and therefore this would not be an issue. However, given the 
     lack of a replication protocol, the root fileset mechanism is needed.

  The reason the root fileset has no data is so that it can be hosted in an 
  NSDB (LDAP).
  
  The current proposal is for clients to locate a root file server via DNS SRV 
  records and for the root fileset metadata (FSN and FSLs) to be stored in a 
  set of root NSDBs.

  The lack of a common administration interface between DNS and NSDB records
  is a potential issue. The root fileset definition should be synchronized 
  between both locations.

  How does a user determine where a given directory resides (e.g. their home 
  directory)?  Is this information stored in a file in the local file system
  or is it located through the global namespace? 

  The normal fed-fs mechanisms for linking filesets through junctions and 
  returning the corresponding client referrals can be used by the client to 
  navigate the namespace to some particular directory (such as a home
  directory).

  How would a new root fileserver be bootstrapped? The root fileset
  information stored in the root NSDB would be used to create a new 
  root file server.

  Renu will be producing a revised version of the fileset document.

  Craig will update his DNS SRV record draft.

+ Dublin Demo

  Amy Weaver and Theresa Raj reenacted the demo they gave 
  at the IETF NFSv4 working group meeting in Dublin.

  They also showed a wire trace of the NSDB protocol traffic. The 
  feedback was that this was the most unique and interesting part of the 
  demonstration.

+ Next week agenda

 - root fileset
 - CIFS