What is the Difference between iSCSI Current Portal and Persistent Portal?

[bhartm62]

When I have two iscsi sessions on a server connected I get the following output. What is the difference between Current and Persistent Portal in iSCSI? The reason I ask this is because I want to understand what happens when the connection to one Current Portal gets interrupted. How comes the Persistent Portal into play? And answer or point to some docu would be very much apprechiated

# netstat -putan | grep iscsi

tcp        0      0 10.5.11.249:58867       10.5.10.15:3260         ESTABLISHED 2503/iscsid    

tcp        0      0 10.5.9.249:38582        10.5.8.15:3260          ESTABLISHED 2503/iscsid

# iscsiadm -m session -P 1

Target: iqn.2007-11.com.nimblestorage:l-nas-003-iotest-lun-v42c28ab7ea0497e6.0000000b.a8c61d51

  Current Portal: 10.5.10.15:3260,2460

  Persistent Portal: 10.5.10.14:3260,2460

  **********

  Interface:

  **********

  Iface Name: default

  Iface Transport: tcp

  Iface Initiatorname: iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:a3d2b8841b8d

  Iface IPaddress: 10.5.11.249

  Iface HWaddress: <empty>

  Iface Netdev: <empty>

  SID: 3

  iSCSI Connection State: LOGGED IN

  iSCSI Session State: LOGGED_IN

  Internal iscsid Session State: NO CHANGE

  Current Portal: 10.5.8.15:3260,2460

  Persistent Portal: 10.5.8.14:3260,2460

  **********

  Interface:

  **********

  Iface Name: default

  Iface Transport: tcp

  Iface Initiatorname: iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:a3d2b8841b8d

  Iface IPaddress: 10.5.9.249

  Iface HWaddress: <empty>

  Iface Netdev: <empty>

  SID: 4

  iSCSI Connection State: LOGGED IN

  iSCSI Session State: LOGGED_IN

  Internal iscsid Session State: NO CHANGE

[Nick_Dyer · Accepted solution]

Hello Benedict,

The current portal is the connection the iSCSI is bound across at that time. The persistent portal is the address returned as part of an iSCSI discovery command; typically I believe it would be the discovery IP address.