iSCSI Initiator Names

In AIX, an iSCSI initiator name must be configured for the iSCSI software initiator and for each iSCSI HBA.

The iSCSI Standard, RFC 3720 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3720), places requirements on the format of the iSCSI initiator names. Oracle FS Path Manager (FSPM) depends on these requirements being met for it to work properly with iSCSI on AIX. In particular, the following rules should be followed:

iSCSI initiator names must be unique to each host. iSCSI initiators within a single host can each have their own names or they can all share the same name, but an iSCSI initiator name used on one host must not be used on any other host that accesses the same Oracle FS System.
iSCSI initiator names must be different from host names. An iSCSI initiator name must not be the same as any host name visible to the Oracle FS System.
iSCSI initiator names must be configured in AIX in the “normalized” string format described in RFC 3722 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3722). For example, names containing only lower case characters, numbers, and the dash, dot and colon characters from the ASCII character set meet this requirement.

See RFC 3720 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3720#section-3.2.6) for more information on iSCSI names.