Hosts
A host system is a server that is connected to the storage system through supported connection protocols.
The storage system supports host connections through Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), NVM Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe), NVM Express (NVMe) over RDMA, NVM Express (NVMe) over TCP, or an IP network. See the System Overview page on the relevant Hardware Guide to understand which supported adapters can be used for each host attach protocol.
- Worldwide port names (WWPNs) for Fibre Channel and SAS hosts
- NVMe qualified names (NQNs) for FC-NVMe, NVM Express (NVMe) over RDMA and NVM Express (NVMe) over TCP hosts
- iSCSI qualified names (IQNs) or extended unique identifiers (EUIs) for iSCSI hosts
A typical configuration has one host object for each server that is attached to the storage system. If a cluster of hosts accesses the same storage, you can add the hosts into a Host Cluster object to make configuration simpler. For details, see Host clusters.
The system can detect WWPNs that have been logged into the system but are not yet configured in host objects, such that these can be allocated to host objects on creation (or added to existing host objects). These are visible in the management GUI in . Some HBA device drivers do not leave ports logged in if no disks are detected on the network.
The Fabric Device Management Interface (FDMI) enables any storage endpoint to register itself to the Fibre Channel (FC) fabric and query the HBA and port details of the entire fabric. For details, see Fabric Device Management Interface.
You can manually enter WWPNs, NQNs and iSCSI names when creating hosts or adding ports to host objects.
Ownership Groups
Hosts can be assigned to an ownership group. Users in an ownership group are restricted to viewing and managing objects within their ownership group. For details, see Ownership groups.