The iSCSI Standards

It comes as a surprise to many people that there is more than one iSCSI standard. Technically, none of these documents are standards yet until they are ratified and issued with an RFC number. For now, each of these documents needs to be used together to completely implement a compliant iSCSI product.

There are 10 draft documents that will eventually become RFCs; 7 are normative (standards) and 3 are informational. Only the "core" documents are shown here. For the complete set, visit the IETF site via the link at the bottom of this page.

The IETF requires that documents be released in text format, but the documents here are in Acrobat (PDF) format for easier reading and annotation. If you need the Acrobat reader, it is available free from Adobe. Click on the icon at the bottom of this page.

iSCSI - draft version 20
(625 KB)
This is the core of the iSCSI protocol. This version been approved by the IESG. The RFC editor will now "dot the i's and cross the t's" before the RFC is released. The number for this new RFC has not been set, so it is still called version 20.

Naming and Discovery - draft version 9
(66 KB)
This covers how devices are named in iSCSI, and how that name gets used in the network. Reading this document first sometimes makes things more clear in the iSCSI spec. It is planned to be a Informational RFC.

iSNS - draft version 18
(435 KB)
The iSNS protocol is used for device discovery in IP networks, so this standard has references to both iSCSI and iFCP.

Security - draft version 19
(143 KB)
This covers the requirements for IPsec with iSCSI (and other protocols). Note that this is a requirement to implement, not a requirement to use.

These are not the only drafts that are proposed to become standards, but they are the main ones. To see the complete list, go to:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ips-charter.html