Re: no DHCP-assigned InitiatorName

Thanks Gaurav. 
You are right. The fact that most of the pre-OS iSCSI initiators don't
have iSNS clients, takes us away from the iSNS scenario atleast for the
boot environment.

On the other hand the scenario where in there are iSNS clients(or a more
enterprise ready environment) we could probably think more on the lines
of security since parameters with DHCP(clear text) is going to be less
secure.

Thanks,
Shyam Iyer

-----Original Message-----
From: Chawla, G 
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:16 AM
To: Michael Howard; Iyer, Shyam
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; Chawla, G
Subject: RE: [Ips] no DHCP-assigned InitiatorName

My 2 cents based on my understanding of iSNS. 

- iSNS clients (initiators and targets) need to have an IQN address
before they register with the iSNS server.
- Most pre-OS iSCSI initiators available today are not iSNS clients i.e.
they don't register with and/or query iSNS server.

Given this, it seems better to have a DHCP based standardized mechanism
for acquiring the initiator IQN. Based on initial email from Michael,
most pre-OS iSCSI Initiators available today have the capability to be a
DHCP client.

Thanks,
Gaurav Chawla
Technology Strategist, Network Storage Architecture | Office of the CTO,
Dell, Inc.
Phone: 512.724.4064 (work)


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Michael Howard
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 2:29 PM
To: Iyer, Shyam
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ips] no DHCP-assigned InitiatorName

[email protected] wrote:
> My 2cents on the issue. Please correct me if I am wrong. 

Thank you for participating in this discussion.

> Shouldn't it be possible to configure the isns server with a set of 
> possibly regex rules for the control path. If this not possible today,

> then it could possibly be the root to take towards standardizing.

I am not familiar enough with iSNS to comment.

I have been exposed to about about a dozen commercial environments with
some level of iSCSI use/experimentation. I am not aware that any of them
  were running iSNS servers.

> This can solve the problem of provisioning for dynamic boot 
> environments with minimum changes to legacy iqn implementations, many 
> of which would need to relearn to the new iqn mechanism that might end

> up as a result of this discussion.

Frankly, my concern is that Broadcom/IBM already have a non-standard
DHCP Vendor Option work-around for this problem.

Adding a new/standardized InitiatorName DHCP option would not break
existing initiator implementations. Vendors would integrate support for
this new InitiatorName option into their code/firmware releases over
time.

> Instead of changing numerous configurations we could simply change the

> isns server control mechanism.

I need to do some homework regarding iSNS.

> Comments?

iSCSI is still a very small part of the market.

I advocate addressing this deficiency sooner rather than later.


Michael
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