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SAN provisioning with iSCSI

Contributors netapp-thomi netapp-ahibbard

In SAN environments, storage systems are targets that have storage target devices. For iSCSI and FC, the storage target devices are referred to as LUNs (logical units). For Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel, the storage target devices are referred to as namespaces.

You configure storage by creating LUNs for iSCSI and FC or by creating namespaces for NVMe. The LUNs or namespaces are then accessed by hosts using Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) or Fibre Channel (FC) protocol networks.

To connect to iSCSI networks, hosts can use standard Ethernet network adapters (NICs), TCP offload engine (TOE) cards with software initiators, converged network adapters (CNAs), or dedicated iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs).

To connect to FC networks, hosts require FC HBAs or CNAs.

Supported FC protocols include:

  • FC

  • FCoE

  • NVMe

iSCSI target node network connections and names

iSCSI target nodes can connect to the network in several ways:

  • Over Ethernet interfaces using software that is integrated into ONTAP.

  • Over multiple system interfaces, with an interface used for iSCSI that can also transmit traffic for other protocols, such as SMB and NFS.

  • Using a unified target adapter (UTA) or a converged network adapter (CNA).

Every iSCSI node must have a node name.

The two formats, or type designators, for iSCSI node names are iqn and eui. The SVM iSCSI target always uses the iqn-type designator. The initiator can use either the iqn-type or eui-type designator.

Storage system node name

Each SVM running iSCSI has a default node name based on a reverse domain name and a unique encoding number.

The node name is displayed in the following format:

iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.unique-encoding-number

The following example shows the default node name for a storage system with a unique encoding number:

iqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.812921059e6c11e097b3123478563412:vs.6

TCP port for iSCSI

The iSCSI protocol is configured in ONTAP to use TCP port number 3260.

ONTAP does not support changing the port number for iSCSI. Port number 3260 is registered as part of the iSCSI specification and cannot be used by any other application or service.