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Re: [Ips] no DHCP-assigned InitiatorName

Michael Howard <michael.howard@scalent.com> Mon, 22 September 2008 18:10 UTC

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Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:10:26 -0400
From: Michael Howard <michael.howard@scalent.com>
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To: Julian Satran <Julian_Satran@il.ibm.com>
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Cc: Sivan Tal <SIVANT@il.ibm.com>, Prasenjit Sarkar <Prasenjit_Sarkar%IBMIL@il.ibm.com>, ips@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [Ips] no DHCP-assigned InitiatorName
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Julian Satran wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> I will have to defer to boot RFC authors. My 2 cents is that DHCP 
> "practice" has already several mechanisms to name the initiator (most 
> based on what the DHCP agents present to the DHCP server - like the real 
> of "fake" (for VMs) MAC address. 

I agree that there are several different mechanisms that are used to 
construct the initiator name. In practice, what we have ended up with is:

   iqn.1987-05.com.intel:<hostname>
   iqn.2000-01.org.etherboot:<hostname>
   iqn.1995-05.com.broadcom.<11.22.33.44.55.66>.iscsiboot
   iqn.1986-03.com.ibm.<11:22:33:44:55:66>.<hostname>

This is a problem because almost every commercially available iSCSI 
target uses the initiator name as an identification mechanism to control 
visibility to target LUNs.

As a result, trying to move from one iSCSI boot initiator to another 
requires changes on the SAN storage controller (or iSCSI head) to 
reconfigure for the new initiator name. This is unnecessarily 
complicated and, in many commercial environments, forces coordination 
across different organizational units.

> And I don't know how the iBFT interacts 
> (or is supposed to) with a DHCP server.

There is no *direct* interaction between the DHCP server and the iBFT. 
Rather, the values get passed through the iSCSI boot initiator.

The boot iSCSI initiator is responsible for populating the iBFT with the 
iSCSI parameters that are required to continue to boot the OS once it 
switches to its protected-mode drivers.

The relevant fields in the iBFT are:
  * portal hostname/ip addr
  * portal port
  * target name
  * target lun
  * initiator name
  * CHAP stuff

The iSCSI boot initiator fills in these fields regardless of whether the 
parameters come from EEPROM config or from a DHCP server. The values 
that are filled in are the same values used by the boot initiator for 
its iSCSI login.


Michael
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