Isns For Linux; How Isns Works; Section 12.1, "How Isns Works - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - STORAGE ADMINISTRATION GUIDE 2-23-2010 Administration Manual

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iSNS for Linux

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Storage area networks (SANs) can contain many disk drives that are dispersed across complex

networks. This can make device discovery and device ownership difficult. iSCSI initiators must be

able to identify storage resources in the SAN and determine whether they have access to them.

Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) is a standards-based service that is available beginning with

SUSE

Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 Support Pack 2. iSNS facilitates the automated

discovery, management, and configuration of iSCSI devices on a TCP/IP network. iSNS provides

intelligent storage discovery and management services comparable to those found in Fibre Channel

networks.

IMPORTANT: iSNS should be used only in secure internal networks.

For an iSCSI initiator to discover iSCSI targets, it needs to identify which devices in the network are

storage resources and what IP addresses it needs to access them. A query to an iSNS server returns a

list of iSCSI targets and the IP addresses that the initiator has permission to access.

Using iSNS, you create iSNS discovery domains and discovery domain sets. You then group or

organize iSCSI targets and initiators into discovery domains and group the discovery domains into

discovery domain sets. By dividing storage nodes into domains, you can limit the discovery process

of each host to the most appropriate subset of targets registered with iSNS, which allows the storage

network to scale by reducing the number of unnecessary discoveries and by limiting the amount of

time each host spends establishing discovery relationships. This lets you control and simplify the

number of targets and initiators that must be discovered.

iSNS for Linux

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