[openfabrics-ewg] IBED Positioning Statement: Draft 2

[Shawn Hansen (shahanse)]

All,

I've attached a second draft to the IBED positioning statement.

We will discuss this in tomorrow's EWG conference call.

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All,

We are pleased to announce the creation of the InfiniBand Enterprise Distribution (IBED), under the direction of the OpenFabrics Enterprise Working Group.

IBED is a distribution of InfiniBand software that includes the OpenFabrics 1.0 release, along with other additional software outside of the scope of the release, such as MPI.

Frequently Asked Questions
--------------------------

Q: What is the Enterprise Working Group?

The EWG is a group of hardware vendors that will sell products based on OpenFabrics.  The purpose of this group is to coordinate how to provide a single commercially supportable distribution of OpenFabrics software to their customers that guarantees cross-vendor interoperability.

Q: Why is IBED required?

- Enterprise customers will have solution-level requirements that are outside the scope of the 1.0 release, such as the distribution of MPI stacks, support for pre-2.6.16 kernels, etc.  The goal of IBED is to address this need.  Without IBED, each InfiniBand vendor would create their own distribution of OpenFabrics to accomplish this goal, and may not be interoperable.

Q: Does IBED compete with the OpenFabrics release?

- No, there is only one OpenFabrics release.  IBED is a distribution that includes the OpenFabrics 1.0 release. The OpenFabrics 1.0 release and IBED share the same user-level code (libraries, management utilities, etc.)  The code for both is taken from the 1.0 branch. 

Q: Is IBED development happening in the open?

- Yes, IBED uses the OpenFabrics bugzilla for bug reporting, and all discussions can be viewed on the Enterprise Working Group mailing list. All IBED development is done on the 1.0 branch under the ibed directory.  Anyone can access release candidates, test them, observe bugs and discussions, report bugs, and comment.

Q: How does IBED differ from the OpenFabrics release?

- The OpenFabrics release contains only user-level code, while the IBED distribution also adds InfiniBand kernel modules that are under OpenFabrics development, including modules that are not part of the kernel (like iSER, RDS, and SDP).

- IBED will include two MPI packages that are not part of Open Fabrics: OSU MPI and Open MPI.

- IBED is packaged for end-user installation.

- IBED supports distribution with older kernels (e.g. Redhat EL4 up2)

Q: What is the software release process for IBED and how does it relate to the OpenFabrics release?

The release build is done using the following method:

1.      Any module that is already in the kernel will be taken from the git tree that is targeted for next kernel release

2.      Kernel modules that are not in Linux kernel will be taken from openFabrics SVN trunk or in extraordinary cases, from SVN contrib. 

3.      All user space code is taken from the 1.0 branch. IBED group will make sure the right patches from the trunk are updated to the branch.

4.      MPI:
Open MPI - Provided by OpenMPI developers.
MVAPICH - Based on OSU release.
Both tarballs are placed in OpenFabrics web site.

5.      IBED build & install scripts: all relevant scripts are placed under a specific directory for IBED release under the 1.0 branch. 

6.      Back port patches: patches directory will be also under the IBED directory in the 1.0 branch. 

The release process:

The release coordinator will build the release candidate (IBED-rcX) and publish it on OpenFabrics (approximately every 2 weeks).

Each IBED vendor is responsible to test the components under his ownership. Bugs are reported through bugzilla and fixes are provided to the general list.

Q: What is the anticipated release schedule?

Mid-May

Q: What components will be included in IBED and how is this decided?

- Components will include:

 - HCA driver - mthca
 - HCA driver - ipath
 - Core
 - IPoIB
 - SDP
 - RDS 
 - SRP initiator
 - iSER initiator
 - OSU MPI
 - Open MPI
 - uDAPL
 - OpenSM 
 - Diagnostic tools
 - Performance tests

The decision to include components is based on customer demand and level of robustness and stability. Some of the components will be released as a "technology preview." <<define>>

Q: When bugs are found, how will they be fixed?

 

-         Fixes to release candidates are coordinated by the IBED release coordinator and maintainers in a controlled fashion. Each bug found is first fixed on the trunk, and then merged into the release branch.

-         Patches will be made available as RC updates, and fed back to OpenFabrics SVN continuously.

-         Availability of patches will not be gated by acceptance of patches into OpenFabrics SVN.

-         Urgent bug fixes can be directly delivered to customers by the distros or vendors, but are rolled into a standard release as quickly as possible.  The goal is to ensure that fixes are standardized and make it to the next general release.

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