METHOD FOR MAPPING AN ISCSI TARGET NAME TO A STORAGE RESOURCE BASED ON AN INITIATOR HARDWARE CLASS IDENTIFIER

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for mapping an iSCSI target name to a virtual disk on an iSCSI storage server, based on a hardware class identifier that is included in an iSCSI login request. The hardware class identifier is unique to the particular hardware configuration of the diskless computing device. An iSCSI initiator residing within a diskless computing device includes the hardware class identifier as a vendor-specific parameter in the iSCSI login request to a generic virtual disk. An iSCSI target that resides on the storage server matches the hardware class identifier in the iSCSI login request with a particular virtual disk that contains the boot image for the hardware class of the diskless computing device. In this fashion, an iSCSI initiator-target nexus between the iSCSI initiator and the appropriate virtual disk may be established.