Unable to change iSCSI Name

[Powl]

Hello!

I'm sure this is something trivial, but I've been searching the Community and Google for the past day and have yet to find the answer. I am attempting to configure iSCSI in our vSphere development environment using software iSCSI initiators. We have had iSCSI running perfectly in our ESX 3.5U4 production environment for quite some time and I have attempted to configure the vSphere hosts the same way. However, I am unable to change the iSCSI name of the iSCSI initiator to a more "friendly" name. Here is the error I am receiving when I attempt to change the name:

Error during the configuration of the host: Failed to set iSCSI name (iscsi:servername.domain.biz) on HBA vmhba33: iScsiLibException: status(c0000000):

Invalid parameter; Message=IMA_VS_SetNodeName

Any ideas? Thanks!

[Andy_Banta]

The iscsi initiator and UI do validation checks on the initiator name. Many targets reject sessions from initiators with invalid names.

The names must be in the format

iqn.YYYY-MM.net.authority:nodename

Where:

YYYY-MM should be the year and the month the naming authority was established

net.authority shoud be the identity of the naming authority in reverse URL format

nodename is a unique name assigned by that naming authority

If you look at a default node name: iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:localhost-7096afcb

"1998-01" January 1998 is when VMware registered their domain name

"com.vmware" is the reverse URL

"localhost-7096afcb" is the ESX-generated unique name for the host.

You can make the name more friendly, but it has to retain the format:

iqn.2005-05.org.powl-corp:powl-desktop

would work.

Alternatively, you can use the format

eui.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

where the 16-digit hex number following eui. is an IEEE assigned header followed by a company-supplied unique identifier.

Formats like iscsi:servername.domain.biz aren't allowed because many targets reject them.

Andy

[Powl]

Ok. That helps. I was just wondering since I could do it in every version until vSphere. No big deal. I just left the default and updated my Equallogic volume access with that iSCSI initiator name. Thanks!