iSCSI Naming convention

Terminologies

IQN

iSCSI Qualified Name, an identifier format defined by the iSCSI protocol

T10

A technical committee within INCITS that develops standards and technical reports on I/O interfaces, particularly the series of SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) standards. 

See http://www.t10.org.

T11

A technical committee within INCITS responsible for standards development in the areas of Intelligent Peripheral Interface (IPI), High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI) and Fibre Channel (FC).

See http://www.t11.org.

NAA

Network Address Authority, a naming format defined by the INCITS T11 Fibre Channel protocols

[FC-FS]. The following table summarizes the current protocols and their naming formats.

This identifier format is used by the Fibre Channel and SAS SCSI transport protocols.

iSCSI
iSCSI uses a unique name to identify an iSCSI node, either target or initiator. This name used as a way to universally identify the node. iSCSI names are formatted in two different ways.

  • IQN
  • EUI

iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN) Format

The iSCSI qualified name format is defined in [RFC3720] 
Example:

iqn.2001-04.com.example.iscsi:SRV1-85412701


Format:

iqn.yyyy-mm.naming-authority:unique name


iqn” specifies the use of the iSCSI qualified name as the authority. 


YYYY-MM” is the year and month on which the naming authority acquired the domain name used in this iSCSI name.


naming-authority ” is usually reverse syntax of the Internet domain name of the naming authority. The name in our example indicates that the example.com domain name was registered in April of 2001, and iscsi is a subdomain, maintained by example.com.


unique name” is any name you want to use, for example, the name of your host. The naming authority must make sure that any names assigned following the colon are unique, such as:

■ iqn.1998-01.com.example.iscsi:srv1
■ iqn.1998-01.com.example.iscsi:arv2
■ iqn.1998-01.com.example.iscsi:srv100

EUI Formatting

The EUI format takes the form eui.16 hex digits. For example, 

eui.0123456789ABCDEF.


The 16-hexadecimal digits are text representations of a 64-bit number of an IEEE EUI (extended unique identifier) format. 

The top 24 bits are a company ID that IEEE registers with a particular company.

The lower 40 bits are assigned by the entity holding that company ID and it must be unique. 


The details of constructing EUI-64 identifiers are specified by the IEEE Registration Authority (see [EUI64]).

iSCSI Alias

The iSCSI alias is a UTF-8 text string that may be used as an additional descriptive name  that can be assigned to an initiator or target, that is independent of the name, and does not have to be unique. Since it is not unique, the alias must be used in a purely informational way. It may not be used to specify a target at login, or used during authentication.The alias must NOT be used to identify, address, or authenticate initiators and targets.

Reference:IETF RFC Doc

4 thoughts on “iSCSI Naming convention

  1. Really good blog – clear and straight to the point. Many thanks!

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