Re: iSCSI gateways, proxies, etc.

[David Robinson <David.Robinson@EBay.Sun.COM>]

Black_David@emc.com wrote:
> (1) Rely on out-of-band gateway/proxy configuration.
> (2) Reference T10's 3rd party naming formats for target naming.
>         This WG would still define an iSCSI 3rd party naming format
>         and recommend it to T10, and could define ways of using
>         T10 naming formats with Internet protocols (e.g., LDAP).
> (3) Invent new ways of naming targets.
> 
> I'm inclined to dismiss (3) as being out-of-scope, because
> if this really is analogous to 3rd party naming, then it needs
> to be left to T10 and iSCSI should follow what T10 adopts, BUT
> I'm willing to listen to counter-arguments.
> 
> (1) and (2) are complementary rather than exclusive, but the
> protocol gets simpler if we don't have to do (2).  The 3rd party
> naming recommendations to T10 are needed regardless.

Based on the discussions so far, I am in favor of (1). Naming is a very
hard problem to get right, leaving it out of band allows greater
flexibility for situtations we may not have even thought of yet.
Most existing IETF protocols have out of band naming and I see no
compelling reason iSCSI needs to be different.

That said, as with the need to specify details of an iSCSI MIB,
an LDAP schema and possibly a DNS record type may need to be
standardized as well.

	-David