Subject: iSCSI MIB: Post-last-call comment

From: Mark Bakke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 15:49:02 -0600

OK, I know that last call is finished, but we found one
more thing to resolve:

   Since iSCSI sessions "belong" to iSCSI nodes, where do
   discovery sessions go on a target?  Since there's no
   target endpoint of a discovery session, there's no place
   to put them.  Discovery sessions on an initiator do not
   appear to pose the same problem, since the initiator's
   identity is present during discovery session login.

To solve this in a simple fashion, we have a few choices:

1. Leave out support for discovery sessions within the MIB

2. Add a "discovery" node under which to put discovery sessions

3. Move sessions out from under nodes (which would be a fairly
   significant change.

I think that solution (3) is overkill, and (1) is probably not
enough.

Solution (2) can be done fairly cleanly, by allowing a node with
a blank iscsiNodeName field to exist as the end point for discovery
sessions.

I'd like to propose that we solve this by simply adding the
following text to the iscsiNodeName description:

  "If this string is left blank, this node is a discovery-only
   node, and supports only discovery sessions."

This could be used for initiators as well, for the symmetrically-
inclined.

If I don't hear any comments on this proposal, I'll put it in
before the draft goes to the ADs. 

-- 
Mark A. Bakke
Cisco Systems
[email-masked]
763.398.1054