SNIA03 - SNIA Storage Technical Assessment, Planning, and Design

Summary

Highlights of this course

Storage Assessment, Planning and Design is both an art and a science. Old approaches creep to the end of their sustainable life. New compute, network and storing paradigms emerge and formerly theoretical methods become practical. The challenge for storage architects and engineers is to seize upon these new models, apply them, and proof them by science being cognizant of the past errors. However, the most successful storage architects will be extremely sensitive to the business client’s needs. They will show themselves willing to learn the business, its requirements and then apply technologies, especially in terms of the new virtualized space including cloud, which in their own right are both fixed and speculative. This person can bridge the gap. In part, they are the conductor of a symphony or director of a film. They know the big picture, all of the details, and by having a firm grasp of that big picture, can drop into any detail at any time. Those who posses these skills will have an edge and can carry their organizations into the future. Only a few storage professionals can fully achieve this ideal.

As a storage engineer, internal and external customers, place their trust in your skill and knowledge. Design documents need to demonstrate understanding of requirements, be accurate in assessment of the environment and serve as a roadmap to a mutually agreed future state. The future state, a solution set, should be accurate, given a set of conditions that function within predictable limits for its useful life. Even defining the conditions is within the realm of the architects efforts. The end customer is not the only consumer of your work. Others require direction including implementation personnel, project managers and vendors. Therefore, the design process must consistently deliver professional solutions and as such, it requires structure, although the pattern adapts, as it is not rigid.

Join us to:
 
• Gain an understanding of storage science
• Find out how to develop storage capacity plans
• Prepare to perform storage assessment, planning and design engagements

Overview

This instructor facilitated course will provide the skills sets needed by both the storage architect and engineer following a vendor neutral approach to the design of solutions in a storage context. In that context, we match business requirements to storage capabilities, aggregating those capabilities to create storage services. The resulting services are complete when they are repeatable, manageable and measurable. A subset of the course meets the full requirements of the SNIA S10-300 Assessment, Planning and Design exam.

Case studies provide learners, working in teams, with the opportunity to work through a variety of storage assessment, planning and design scenarios following the methodologies as they would in practice. The case studies and supporting data are from real engagements, which may have non-standard outcomes. Student’s plan interview strategies, and instructors role-play as the interviewee. Instructors review team performance, technical solution and organizational dynamics against the actual outcome.

Duration

5 days, Instructor-Led

Audience

Everyone responsible for the assessment, planning, and design; including those responsible for top tier technical support of new and existing storage products and services; this is typically limited to experienced development, administration, implementation, delivery, support, and management staff. Staff members required to complete the internationally recognized SNIA S10-300 Storage Assessment, Planning & Design examination will find this course essential.

• Architect
• Storage Manager
• SAN Manager

Prerequisites

• Course SNIA Storage Network Foundations
• Course ((SNIA02H))
• S10-101 Storage Network Fundamentals and S10-200 Storage Administrator.
• S10-201 or S10-211 Storage Management and Administration is optional.
• Strong IT literacy, with at least five years experience in IT and two years in Storage Operations.
• Advanced computer skills and knowledge in at least one operating system.
• Technical skill developing complex solutions is a plus.
• Organizational and personal non-disclosure agreement and license agreement are required.

How our course is different from other courses you might consider?

We teach the special skill sets that bridge the “gap.” The architect is a very special role, it requires more than just technical skill sufficient to pass an exam; it requires a consummate professional who can connect business requirements to storage capabilities. As a result, our students tell us that it cut their design time in half, i.e., 50% greater efficiency, made their storage deployments more effective, and for those in sales, it yielded 20% higher sales. This is not a result of better selling - this is not a sales course, it is about meeting needs with technical solutions. Isn't that you want, to have others accept your design?

This is a difficult course. It is based on lecture and case study. The lecture component features both business strategy and storage science. The science has applied calculations that you will find nowhere else except under NDA; they will help you defend your design. Design must meet business need and be consistent with strategy, otherwise, no matter how good the science, the design will be for naught - a movie produced but never seen. The case studies are taken from our consulting practice - a journey from small decisions to global infrastructure design. Some people say that their head hurts, because it is too much like work - well, we are unapologetic.

It would be difficult, even for the largest storage vendors to replicate this experience. It represents lifetimes of experience. Uses real data from real systems. The instructors are active consultants who use the methodology daily. This course is not about an industry or us; it is about taking you to the next level. Take our competitors’ courses if you want to spend less money and just pass the exam; take ours if you want to pass the real exam, to be a consummate storage professional, the architect.

Expected Outcome

Pass the S10-300 Exams. Have strong verbal and practical understanding of storage. Be able to assess, plan and design across all storage disciplines and products. Balance technical and business skill in the process.

Special Note

This course represents a tremendous body of work. Many books and standards documents were used in it's creation. It is technically deep. Yet it is more than theory. All case studies (group) and design studios (individual) activities are taken from real consulting engagements using a variety of infrastructures. Over 3,000 storage consultants have taken this course from Knowledge Transfer. We update the course quarterly.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of the course, the learner should be able to:

• Facilitate macro and micro storage strategy formulation and implementation
• Assess infrastructure: identifying gaps against strategy and best practices in technical and business contexts
• Develop a broad knowledge of storage best practices; know their content, understand how they are created, how to evaluate against them and the underlying science
• Provide planning and design services consistent with ILM strategy
• Describe key consultative skills including, strategy formulation, service management, and capability maturity
• Demonstrate understanding of the implications of ITIL and CMM concepts as applied to multiple storage infrastructure components
• Develop availability, capacity and business plans across multiple platforms and applications

Structure and Methodology

Structure:

• Present assessment process and methodology
• Gather requirements and current state, analyze, define future state and gap analysis resulting in recommendations and detailed design
• Use ITIL & CMM as tools to analyze IT Maturity as applied to storage, determining next steps
• Plan & Design from both business and technical perspective 
• Apply Principles of Capacity and Performance
• Apply Principles of Availability and Continuity
• Mitigate Configuration, Operability, Manageability, Financial, and Security issues

Methodology:

• Lecture, Exercises, and Quizzes/Test-prep  (60%)
• Case Studies with Student Presentations  (40%)

Exam Objectives

Assess:

Gather current and future state requirements, documenting behaviors, conditions, and interactions on and between information systems. Identify storage capabilities needed to meet requirements, creating an idealized future-state. Gather technical data about the current storage infrastructure, using capability terms. Identify technical inconsistencies, risks, and bottlenecks.

Design:

Define and explain the components and impact of integrating technology changes. Design for availability, B/R, and D/R for FC, IP, Array, NAS and management infrastructures. Demonstrate design value against access, security, volume, and growth.

Plan:

Demonstrate the ability to take responsibility for coordination of all storage plans and strategies within the constraints of meeting storage requirements, technical coordination, measurement, and review of all progress and plans. Show practical knowledge of storage infrastructure capabilities and components and how to assemble and create a solution. Capabilities include media, replication, transports, and protocols. Components include disks, arrays, virtualization, network (SAN and IP), and backup and replication mechanisms.

Troubleshooting and Problem Resolution:

Understand and apply an ITIL™ best practices approach in every part of this objective. Use advanced troubleshooting techniques and tools to solve storage problems; particularly where the architecture limitations exceed present and future capabilities. Plan and implement proof-of-concept and benchmark activities. Manage integration, data migration and continuity process. Create quality assurance strategy and procedures. Pursue an error free operation through development of qualitative and quantitative measurement criteria.

ITIL:

Know the ITIL™ capacity planning process. Create a capacity plan for all storage related components in the infrastructure domain. Demonstrate knowledge of scalability, throughput, and bandwidth requirements, including impacts. Justify how a capacity plan aligns with application life cycle. Apply the planning process in an integrated solution approach (NAS, FC, IP, SAN, Array, B/R, D/R). Plan for storage and server consolidation.

Course Contents

Each module concludes with potential questions that an assessor might use within an assessment, planning and design process. Every APD event is unique and the assessor must choose the best methodology and questioning.

Overview

• Overview
• Engagement Process
• Consulting Methodologies
• IT Service Management Fundamentals and Methodologies
• Object Oriented Methodologies
• Policy Development

Data Management

• Data Access Characteristics
• Oracle Database Management
• Managing Storage Allocation
• Specialized Environments (Distributed, Partitioned, HA)
• Vendor Specific RDMS Best Practices (DB2, MySQL, Informix, Ingres, Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, Teradata)
• Database and Decision Support Analytics which support storage decisions
• Big Data
• eDiscovery
• Data Tiering
• Archive and Long-Term Retention

Operability

• Service Level Management (ITIL)
• Storage Service Catalog
• Completing the Service
• Storage Consulting Solution Sets (Patterns)
• Storage Services
• Service Desk Integration
• Operability Consulting Process/Templates

Capacity

• Capacity Management (ITIL)
• Technical Fundamentals
• Performance Modeling (Compute, Fabric, Storage)
• Application Capacity Management (Archive, Database, eMail, File, Video)
• Application Acceleration
• Virtual Infrastructure Tricks (Thin Provisioning, De-Duplication)
• Applied Storage Capacity Management (Host, Fabric, Storage, NAS, CAS, Network)
• Consolidation
• Storage in Cloud Computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
• Capacity Consulting Process/Templates

Availability

• Availability (ITIL)
• High Availability Strategies
• Backup & Recovery
• Business Continuity (ITIL)
• Applied Continuity Strategies
• Recovery Consulting Process/Templates

Configuration

• Configuration (ITIL)
• Release (ITIL)
• Change (ITIL)
• Technical Fundamentals
• Applied Design Principles

Financial

• Financial Management (ITIL)
• Evaluating Storage Investments (TCO, ROI, ROM)
• Storage Asset Management
• Financial Consulting Process/Templates

Mainframe

• Overview
• Storage Configuration
• Pool Analytics

Security

• Securing the Storage Infrastructure (defining the problem)
• Basic Storage Security
• Security Use Cases
• Best Practices
• Information Assurance (Security-as-a-Storage-Service)
• Storage Security Audit (ISACA aligned)

ILM

• Systematic Approach
• Data Classification
• Applied ILM

Why take the Knowledge Transfer version of this course...

If you want to take a course just to pass the exam, please take someone else’s course. If you want to learn from case studies derived from real assessments, from terabytes to petabytes, taught by instructors who are low on ego and high on process (because they did and continue to do the job), then take our course. Our course is longer and harder and you will learn more (the body of knowledge covered was originally two weeks long and is constantly updated; every day will be a full eight to ten hours, except Friday, which will be seven and half.) Bring your problems, and we will work them. You will think differently when finished, if you do not, you are not an architect – some people are not destined to be architects.