## About Initiators

An initiator is the protocol-specific physical port that initiates the I/O exchanges with the system. In a Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN), an initiator is the FC port that is identified by a port worldwide name (WWN). If a host is connected to the system by two host bus adapters (HBAs), the system handles the host as two different initiators. FC array LUN masking and mapping uses initiator port identifiers to authenticate storage customers.

In a SCSI environment, an initiator is a SCSI node that sends requests to a SCSI device. SCSI adapters in hosts are usually initiators, but storage devices that provide virtualization can also act as initiators to other SCSI devices.

When a new initiator is connected into the storage environment, the system discovers it and adds it to the Default domain. To complete the configuration, add a description of the initiator to identify it, move it to another domain if necessary, and then map the initiator to a volume.

When you create a new domain, you specify which unmapped initiators are in the domain. After an initiator is mapped to a volume, you cannot change its domain.

To see the current initiators, go to the Initiator Summary page, as described in Displaying Initiator Information.

### Related Topics

- Managing Initiators
- Mapping an Initiator to Volumes