iSCSI Naming Conventions

iSCSI uses a special unique name to identify an iSCSI node, either target or initiator.

iSCSI names are formatted in two different ways. The most common is the IQN format.

For more details on iSCSI naming requirements and string profiles, see RFC 3721 and RFC 3722 on the IETF website.

iSCSI Qualified Name Format

The iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN) format takes the form iqn.yyyy-mm.naming-authority:unique name, where:

• yyyy-mm is the year and month when the naming authority was established.
• naming-authority is the reverse syntax of the Internet domain name of the naming authority. For example, the iscsi.vmware.com naming authority can have the iSCSI qualified name form of iqn.1998-01.com.vmware.iscsi. The name indicates that the vmware.com domain name was registered in January of 1998, and iscsi is a subdomain, maintained by vmware.com.
• unique name is any name you want to use, for example, the name of your host. The naming authority must make sure that any names assigned following the colon are unique, such as:
  • iqn.1998-01.com.vmware.iscsi:name1
  • iqn.1998-01.com.vmware.iscsi:name2
  • iqn.1998-01.com.vmware.iscsi:name999

Enterprise Unique Identifier Format

The Enterprise Unique Identifier (EUI) format takes the form eui.16_hex_digits.

For example, eui.0123456789ABCDEF.

The 16-hexadecimal digits are text representations of a 64-bit number of an IEEE EUI (extended unique identifier) format. The top 24 bits are a company ID that IEEE registers with a particular company. The remaining 40 bits are assigned by the entity holding that company ID and must be unique.