topic Re: Port Setup As Target Or Initiator in ONTAP Hardware

Port Setup As Target Or Initiator

cannetapp58 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:22:57 GMT

I asked this question to our Netapp admin but they had no clue.

We have a Netapp VS3240 connected by 10 GIG cards into our nexus switches.

When I look on the nexus sides they show up as initiator not targets. Reading the documentation it says the cards by default are initiators

scsi-fcp:init 248

These heads serve up CIFS and NFS

Should these ports be setup as target not initiators?

What impact could this have if they are left as initiators?

Thanks

Re: Port Setup As Target Or Initiator

ScottMiller — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:06:21 GMT

Target/initiator status is SAN-related. Since you're only serving data via NAS protocols, this should be irrelavant to operation, and there should be no impact.

Are you saying that the Ethernet uplinks appear as initiators? Are they converged adapters?

Re: Port Setup As Target Or Initiator

cannetapp58 — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:01:22 GMT

Yes they are CNA cards.

These are connected to a Nexus switch and when they are FCoE cards. When they log into the fabric that is where I am seeing them as initiators. The other storage we have all show up as targets. The NetApp shows up as a initiator in the fabric

Re: Port Setup As Target Or Initiator

ScottMiller — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 17:19:23 GMT

Yeah, that makes sense. As an initiator, the port can only be used to connect to other storage systems. I.e., the port cannot be used to host SAN storage. Since you are only using IP-based protocols, this won't matter to you. If you decide that you want to host FC/FCoE LUNs through this port in the future, you can switch the port to target mode, but it can be safely left in this state today.