Manage iSCSI Portal Groups

Field

Description

Portal Group

A group of one or more network interfaces over which the storage system receives iSCSI requests. The network interfaces in a target portal group collectively coordinate an iSCSI session. If Data ONTAP is configured for multi-connection iSCSI sessions, all TCP connections within an iSCSI session must use interfaces assigned to the same target portal group. Each interface can be assigned to one and only one target portal group. For more information about multi-connection sessions, see the Data ONTAP Block Access Management Guide.

Note: Moving an interface from one target portal group to another does not affect whether the interface is enabled or disabled. For example, assigning a disabled interface to a target portal group does not enable the interface. You move an interface from one target portal group to another when you add it to or remove it from a target portal group or when you destroy the target portal group to which an interface is assigned.

To facilitate multi-connection iSCSI sessions, you can define your own target portal groups that contain multiple network interfaces. Using multi-connection sessions means that the loss of a single TCP connection (due to a cable pull, for example) does not necessarily result in the loss of the iSCSI session. You do not need to use MPIO to enable support for multiple connections.

Data ONTAP assigns any interface that is not part of a user-defined target portal group to a system default target portal group.

Type

Indicates whether the target portal group was created manually by a user or automatically by Data ONTAP.

Tag

A numerical value ranging from 0 to 65535 that identifies a specific iSCSI target portal group. When you use FilerView to create a target portal group, you can specify a tag from 1 to 256 yourself or allow Data ONTAP to assign a tag automatically.

Interfaces

The network interfaces currently assigned to the iSCSI target portal group.  

Data ONTAP allows a single host to access iSCSI LUNs over up to 16 different network data paths simultaneously. Data ONTAP does support multiple TCP connections over the same data path, but distinct data paths are needed to obtain the high availability and bandwidth aggregation benefit.

Note: Your initiator software might support a lower maximum number of connections than the 16 connections supported by Data ONTAP. For details, see the documentation for your initiator software.