iSCSI: Some proposed vendor-specific (X-) keys

[Ken Sandars <ksandars@eurologic.com>]

Hi all,

Can all you implementers out there consider this proposal please? This is 
intended to be an aid to interoperability. Obviously once the spec is 
approved and everyone is fully complient there will be no need for this.

This proposal is in no means intended to go into the specification (unless 
people REALLY want it), so feel free to skip this message now ;-)

I suggest three vendor specific declarative keys which MAY/SHOULD be sent 
during the login phase (during the operational parameter negotiation stage):

X-vendor
X-product
X-revision

These all contains strings, eg:

X-vendor=fredsIscsiShop
X-product=YetAnotherIscsiTarget
X-revision=1.003

These keys follow the SCSI inquiry command fields in terms of names, and are 
used to identify the iSCSI node's information.

What does this achieve? I'm looking for an opportunity to provide automated 
interoperability between systems which are not yet fully complient.

But I hear you think, "But why don't they just fix them?", and I have to 
agree.

However, there are a number of iSCSI products which work wonderfully well 
already out there (as long as you don't excite one of their quirks). If you 
find out what you are connecting with during login, you can decide what 
things you should or shouldn't do with it.


-- 
Ken Sandars
Eurologic Systems Ltd
ksandars@eurologic.com