Understanding SAN host provisioning

In SAN environments, storage systems are targets that have storage target devices. For iSCSI and FC, the storage target devices are referred to as LUNs (logical units). For Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel, the storage target devices are referred to as namespaces.

You configure storage by creating LUNs for iSCSI and FC or by creating namespaces for NVMe. The LUNs or namespaces are then accessed by hosts using Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) or Fibre Channel (FC) protocol networks.

To connect to iSCSI networks, hosts can use standard Ethernet network adapters (NICs), TCP offload engine (TOE) cards with software initiators, converged network adapters (CNAs), or dedicated iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs).

To connect to FC networks, hosts require FC HBAs or CNAs.