> Let's be clear that NDMP, as a standard, is not evolving anymore. > > The existing NDMP Clients are all backup software, which has not > been Sun's business to develop. If we want to involve our OEM > backup software vendors in enhanced security extensions to NDMP > (this is doable with the right business case) the protocol, wouldn't > that still be a different ARC case with requirements on this project, > but as a follow-on release? > > -- mark
Yes. More generally, we have *zero* control over clients: they are existing backup apps, and the entire objective here is to be able to support backup from these *existing* control applications, not some new version of them we hope to induce the ISVs to release. These are both business and technical constraints on this project, so please keep them in mind for any discussion: the objective is to support backup via an existing protocol (no matter how stupid) via an existing set of clients. Furthermore, NDMP is a backup control protocol which is, in enterprise practice, exercised over secured administrative networks inside of enterprises. This is what existing vendors ship, what existing customers use, and is part of a set of solutions Sun is currently excluded from providing in part due to our not having this project integrated yet. Discussion of how to make this thing properly secured within the defined set of constraints is useful and productive, as long as it does not venture outside of those constraints into redefining the protocol or its clients. (Such discussion is useful as well, but it belongs in an ARC opinion offering guidance for future backup technology invented by Sun and its community, not as instructions for the deliverables associated with this project.) -Mike -- Mike Shapiro, Solaris Kernel Development. blogs.sun.com/mws/
