An initiator is a Fibre Channel (FC) world wide port name (WWPN), an iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN), or an iSCSI EUI (Extended Unique Identifier) that identifies a host endpoint. Initiators are collected into initiator groups (igroups) used to control which hosts can access specific LUNs. Initiators are also discovered as they log in to SAN network LIFs.

ONTAP supports configuration for an initiator. Configured properties apply to all uses of the initiator within an SVM. Although the same initiator may interact with multiple SVMs of a cluster, ONTAP treats initiator configuration as an SVM-scoped activity. For example, a comment may be set for an initiator in a specific SVM. The comment value applies to all uses of the initiator in the SVM including use in multiple initiator groups. But a different comment value may be specified for the same initiator in a different SVM.

The initiator REST API provides read-only access to properties of initators.

An FC WWPN consists of 16 hexadecimal digits grouped as 8 pairs separated by colons. The format for an iSCSI IQN is iqn.yyyy-mm.reverse_domain_name:any. The iSCSI EUI format consists of the eui. prefix followed by 16 hexadecimal characters.