Initiator Presentation Modes

Two modes are available to present iSCSI hosts in the Fibre Channel fabric: transparent initiator mode and proxy initiator mode.

In transparent initiator mode, each iSCSI host is presented as one virtual Fibre Channel host. The benefit of transparent mode is it allows a finer level of Fibre Channel access control configuration (similar to managing a “real” Fibre Channel host). Because of the one-to-one mapping from iSCSI to Fibre Channel, each host can have different zoning or LUN access control on the Fibre Channel storage device.

In proxy initiator mode, there is only one virtual Fibre Channel host per one IPS port and all iSCSI hosts use that to access Fibre Channel targets. In a scenario where the Fibre Channel storage device requires explicit LUN access control for every host, the static configuration for each iSCSI initiator can be overwhelming. In this case, using the proxy initiator mode simplifies the configuration.

Caution

Enabling proxy initiator mode of an iSCSI interface that is part of an iSLB VRRP group impacts load balancing on the interface. See the "Changing iSCSI Interface Parameters and the Impact on Load Balancing" topic.

The maximum number of iSCSI sessions on a switch is 5000.

The maximum number of iSCSI sessions per IPS port in transparent initiator mode is 500.

The maximum number of iSCSI sessions per IPS port in proxy initiator mode is 500.

The maximum number of concurrent sessions an IPS port can create is five (but the total number of sessions that can be supported is 500).

Note If more than five iSCSI sessions try to come up simultaneously on a port, the initiator receives a temporary error and later retries to create a session.