RE: iSCSI Naming and Discovery

[Charles Monia <cmonia@NishanSystems.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Hafner/Almaden/IBM [mailto:hafner@almaden.ibm.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 8:08 AM
> To: David Robinson
> Cc: IPS@ece.cmu.edu
> Subject: Re: iSCSI Naming and Discovery
> 
> 
> 
> David,
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >I assert that within the iSCSI transport the service level naming
> >never appears (I am ignoring 3rd party transfers for now). Thus
> ?using some sort of URL like name as part of a connection login
> >is redundant information, the target doesn't need to be told who
> >it is.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> >So I see the WG needed to resolve two independant issues, the first
> >is how to name a sub-unit at login, the second is how to define
> >the service level name that resolves into an IP/port and what the
> >resolver is.  I think a URL is overkill for the former but might
> >be appropiate for the latter.
> 
> I don't see the reason at all for the first.  Sub-unit are 
> SCSI LUs and
> discovery and naming conventions for those are already 
> established by T10,
> SAM, SPC-x, etc.  The only issue that I believe this WG needs 
> to resolve is
> the mechanisms for the establishment of a connection between 
> initiator and
> target (and whatever authentication/security features are 
> required on top
> of that).
> 

One problem with the existing SCSI discovery mechanisms for logical units,
of course, is that they don't scale well when the universe of logical units
becomes large.  

With that in mind, I was tempted to assert that the storage naming service
should help us find the location of an LU directly, using it's world wide
name.  As I think about this, however, I suspect that storage management at
this level of granularity is best done by the vendors who supply such tools.

<snip>

Charles