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    <title>Initiator Presentation Modes </title>
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<a name="wp1074182"> </a><h1 class="pTitle">
Initiator Presentation Modes

</h1>
<a name="wp1074184"> </a><p class="pBody">
Two modes are available to present iSCSI hosts in the Fibre Channel fabric: transparent initiator mode 
and proxy initiator mode.

</p>
<div class="pSmartList1"><ul class="pSmartList1">
<a name="wp1074186"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">In transparent initiator mode, each iSCSI host is presented as one virtual Fibre Channel host. The 
benefit of transparent mode is it allows a finer level of Fibre Channel access control configuration 
(similar to managing a “real” Fibre Channel host). Because of the one-to-one mapping from iSCSI 
to Fibre Channel, each host can have different zoning or LUN access control on the Fibre Channel 
storage device. 
</li>
<a name="wp1074187"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">In proxy initiator mode, there is only one virtual Fibre Channel host per one IPS port and all iSCSI 
hosts use that to access Fibre Channel targets. In a scenario where the Fibre Channel storage device 
requires explicit LUN access control for every host, the static configuration for each iSCSI initiator 
can be overwhelming. In this case, using the proxy initiator mode simplifies the configuration.
</li>
<a name="wp1074188"> </a><p class="pCaution">
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Caution	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong>
</td>
<td>
<p>Enabling proxy initiator mode of an iSCSI interface that is part of an iSLB VRRP group impacts load 
balancing on the interface. See the <a href="ciscsi031.html">&quot;Changing iSCSI Interface Parameters and the Impact on Load 
Balancing&quot; topic</a>.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

</p>
</ul></div>
<a name="wp1074193"> </a><p class="pBody">
The Cisco MDS switches support the following iSCSI session limits:

</p>
<div class="pSmartList1"><ul class="pSmartList1">
<a name="wp1074194"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">The maximum number of iSCSI sessions on a switch is 5000.
</li>
<a name="wp1074195"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">The maximum number of iSCSI sessions per IPS port in transparent initiator mode is 500.
</li>
<a name="wp1074196"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">The maximum number of iSCSI sessions per IPS port in proxy initiator mode is 500. 
</li>
<a name="wp1074197"> </a><li class="pSmartList1">The maximum number of concurrent sessions an IPS port can create is five (but the total number of 
sessions that can be supported is 500). 
</li>
</ul></div>
<a name="wp1074199"> </a><p class="pBodyAutonumNoRule">
<strong>Note	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong> If more than five iSCSI sessions try to come up simultaneously on a port, the initiator receives a 
temporary error and later retries to create a session.

</p>
<hr /><br><p class="pBody">Copyright 2010-2013, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.</p> 

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