Discovery
Sessions
A discovery
session is part of the iSCSI protocol. The discovery session returns the set of
targets that you can access on an iSCSI storage system.
ESXi
systems
support dynamic and static discovery.
- Dynamic discovery - Also known as Send Targets discovery. Each time theESXihost contacts a specified iSCSI storage server, it sends a Send Targets request to the server. In response, the iSCSI storage server supplies a list of available targets to theESXihost. Monitor and manage withesxcli iscsi adapter discovery sendtarget.
- Static discovery - TheESXihost does not have to perform discovery. Instead, theESXihost uses the IP addresses or domain names and iSCSI target names, IQN or EUI format names, to communicate with the iSCSI target. Monitor and manage withesxcli iscsi adapter discovery statictarget.
For either case, you set up
target discovery addresses so that the initiator can determine which storage
resource on the network is available for access. You can do this setup with
dynamic discovery or static discovery. With dynamic discovery, all targets
associated with an IP address or host name and the iSCSI name are discovered.
With static discovery, you must specify the IP address or host name and the
iSCSI name of the target you want to access. The iSCSI HBA must be in the same
VLAN as both ports of the iSCSI array.