iSNS Graphical User Interface(GUI)

Overview

The iSNS graphical user interface (GUI) has been designed with a task-oriented focus to provide an intuitive front-end for iSNS management operations. The basic operations include the following:

• Create a Discovery Domain or Domain Set
• Manage the Members of a Discovery Domain (Set)
• Delete or Rename a Discovery Domain (Set)
• Activate/Deactivate a Discovery Domain Set

Convenience operations are additionally provided, to include:

• Manage the node’s assignments to domains
• Identify all nodes that are not assigned to any domain
• Identify all nodes that are members of a given domain
• Quickly find a node among a long list using AJAX-powered search-as-you-type
• View “connectivity count” – # of nodes contained in each domain
• View node members in a given domain by type (target and initiator)

Architecture

The BUI comprises a web-tier and a JMX-based module that facilitate communication with the iSNS server. Though a JNI layer connects Java applications to the iSNS server with an XML-based query mechanism, the JMX modules act as a "proxy server" to provide a facade above this, both for a high-level abstraction and to insulate the web-tier from potential JNI-related segmentation violations.

Queries from the web application to the proxy server are accomplished with RMI, with an API supporting the use cases needed by the GUI. The proxy server creates XML documents for each query that are shuttled through the JNI layer to the iSNS server. The server returns an XML document that the proxy server transforms and enhances as needed, returning that resulting XML document to the web application.