Storage Networking Fundamentals: An Introduction to Storage Devices, Subsystems, Applications, Management, and File Systems (Vol 1)

Appendix B. INCITS Storage Standards

The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) is an American standards organization that is a vehicle for creating, publishing, and maintaining computer and communications standards. The "International" in INCITS refers to its role in working with other international standards groups to create worldwide technology standards.

Several storage standards are managed by INCITS committees. The T10 committee is devoted to Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) technology. While most of the T10 committee's activities relate to storage, a significant amount of nonstorage SCSI technology is described in T10 standards documents. The T11 committee publishes standards for various communications and storage technologies, including Fibre Channel (FC) and High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI). Today, FC is the most active technology under development as a T11 INCITS standard. Finally, the T13 committee is dedicated to AT Attachment (ATA) storage technology.

Each of these committees has its own website describing the work it does with references to draft versions of standards documents. Draft documents are typically available as free PDF downloads, but finalized, published versions of the committee's standards must be purchased from INCITS. The casual reader can gather a great deal of insight into the standards without reading the final, published versions. Engineering organizations obviously need to see "the real McCoy" before embarking on any serious development efforts. The sections in this appendix are a listing of information available through the T10, T11, and T13 committee websites.