Now, you have successfully connected to a shared target on your iSCSI array. If you selected the Automatically Restore This Connection When The System Boots check box as explained in the previous step, you can now add the target to the iSCSI service’s binding list. By doing so, you make sure that Windows does not consider the iSCSI service fully started until connections are restored to all volumes on the binding list. This is important if you have data on an iSCSI target that other services depend on. For example, if you create a share on your server and that shared data resides on an iSCSI target, the Server service that handles the share depends on the iSCSI service’s complete availability to bring up the shares.
Note: With older versions of the iSCSI initiators, creating this kind of dependency structure required you to reconfigure individual service dependencies — a process that could get complicated. With the iSCSI Initiator version 2, Microsoft has fixed this issue, but you still need to bind the targets.
The best option is to choose the Bound Volumes/Devices tab from the iSCSI Initiator’s control panel and click the Bind All button at the bottom of the window (Figure I). This will bind all available iSCSI targets (that can be bound) to the iSCSI startup process. If you want to choose individual targets to bind, click the Add button. However, you will need to know the target’s drive letter or mount point. At this point in these instructions, we haven’t gotten quite that far.
Figure I
Bound volumes are listed on this tab.