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SANtricity 11.8

Host terminology

Contributors netapp-jolieg

Learn how the host terms apply to your storage array.

Component Definition

Host

A host is a server that sends I/O to a volume on a storage array.

Host name

The host name should equate to the system name of the host.

Host cluster

A host cluster is a group of hosts. You create a host cluster to make it easy to assign the same volumes to multiple hosts.

Host interface protocol

A host interface protocol is the connection (such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI, etc.) between the controllers and the hosts.

HBA or Network Interface Card (NIC)

A host bus adapter (HBA) is a board that resides in a host and contains one or more host ports.

Host port

A host port is a port on a host bus adapter (HBA) that provides the physical connection to a controller and is used for I/O operations.

Host port identifier

A host port identifier is a unique world-wide name associated with each host port on a host bus adapter (HBA).

  • Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) host port identifiers must have between 1 and 233 characters. iSCSI host port identifiers display in standard IQN format (e.g., iqn.xxx.com.xxx:8b3ad).

  • Non-iSCSI host port identifiers such as Fibre Channel and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) display as colon-delimited after every two characters (e.g., xx:yy:zz). Fibre Channel host port identifiers must have 16 characters.

Host operating system type

The host operating system type is a configuration setting that defines how the controllers in the storage array react to I/O depending on the operating system (or variant) of the host. This is also sometimes called host type for short.

Controller host port

A controller host port is a port on the controller that provides the physical connection to a host and is used for I/O operations.

LUN

A logical unit number (LUN) is the number assigned to the address space that a host uses to access a volume. The volume is presented to the host as capacity in the form of a LUN.

Each host has its own LUN address space. Therefore, the same LUN can be used by different hosts to access different volumes.