Storage Jobs - Storage Area Network or SAN jobs: 2007

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Storage Jobs High Salary Software Career Blog INDEX

Storage Blog Index Vmware SAN iSCSI FC Lots of Interview Questions

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Vmware VI3 Training ESX Virtual Center Vmotion Training in Bangalore : 5 Days

First time in Bangalore Vmware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Training with Hands-On Lab Sessions.

You can search on monsterindia.com for terms like
"virtualization", VMware ,ESX,ESX administration, Virtualization administration ,vmware qa, vmware testing , virtual server , Server consolidation , Virtual Infrastructure 3 or VI3 - all these job profiles you can try with the knowledge gained from this training.

Please email vmwarejobs@gmail.com for registration as we have limited seats per batch.

This course is for new entrants in the Virtualization field who are interested in VMware Virtual Infrastructure product suite.VMWare is the market leader in Server Virtualization segment. Though Microsoft,Oracle,Citrix,Sun Microsystems are also in this Virtualization market recently but Vmware's VI3 is the clear market leader with more than 5000 Enterprise Customers. Demand for Professionals with expertise in Vmware VI3 is huge & the salary package offered to these professionals are really exciting.

Course duration is 5 days covering the below mentioned topics including Hands-On Labs. You will get additional hours to practice in labs after these 5 day training.

Many newcomers to Software Domain or System administration domain may be under the impression that 5 days may not be enough to learn Vmware VI3.But since you get Hands-On Lab Training & also get additional hours of lab you can definitely learn .You can also speed up your expertise on Vmware virtualization by attending additional theory/lab sessions.

Course COVERAGE:
--------------------------
Introduction to Virtualization
Introduction to Vmware products
Vmware VI3 Overview

1.Installing ESX Server
ESX Server Install
Planning ESX Server Deployment
Patching and Upgrading ESX Server
ESX Server Configuration

2.Network Configuration in ESX
Creating Virtual Switches
Virtual Switches types & their usage
Traffic Shaping,Load balancing,Failover

3.Storage Configuration in ESX
Supported Storage Types
NAS,iSCSI,VMFS DataStore Creation
Raw Device Mapping
Storage management

4.Virtual Center
Licensing
Virtual Center Architecture
Virtual Center Objects,Inventory
Planning VC Deployment
Managing multiple ESX Hosts using VC

5.VM Creation (Virtual Machine Creation)
and Guest Operating Sysytem Installation
Creating Virtual Machine
Installing Guest Operating System in VM
Managing Virtual Machines

6.Security Configurations in ESX

7.Resource Management in ESX
Resource Pools
Restricting resources for Virtual Machines

8.Vmotion,HA(High Availability),DRS

9.ESX Monitoring

10.ESX Troubleshooting

Please email vmwarejobs@gmail.com for registration details as we have limited seats per batch. Next batch will be started in the last week of December exact date will be notified through email to you.

Salary for these jobs are starting from 5 Lakhs per annum to 10 lakhs PA and above. But it also depends on your level of expertise,how well you perform in interview , what projects you have worked on & your previous work experience.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Vmware Infrastructure 3 Free Workshop 1 Day Hands-On Lab : VMware VI3 Install & Configure in Bangalore

Hands on Workshop for 1 day on Vmware VI3 in Bangalore, email vmwarejobs@gmail.com for registration. Please mention about your tech background,experience,education in your email. Limited number of seats : Only few candidates will be allowed for this FREE 1 Day Vmware VI3 Workshop. Please email early to register your seat for this Free Virtualization hands on lab/workshop.

This Virtualization workshop gives you a very good understanding of the power & features of Vmware Infrastructure 3 Product suite. The date is not yet finalized but will be notified through email to you 1 week ahead of the schedule.

Coverage of the Hands on Lab/Workshop
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vmware VI3 Overview
Installation & Configuration of ESX
Network Configuration in ESX
Storage Configuration in ESX
Virtual Machine Creation & Guest Operating System Installation
Vmotion (Live Migration of a Powered On Virtual Machine)
Vmware HA (High Availability)
VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduling)

This is a very exciting offering as Vmware's virtualization is a very hot technology & getting to see its true powers in a lab is going to be even more exciting. There is a huge growth in Virtualization technology domain. This huge growth is due to the growing problems of Today's & Tomorrow's Data Center issues like :
1. Power constraints ( Even if you have money there is a limit to how much electricity you can get to your Data Centre & that limits the growth of your Data Centre drastically )
2. Cooling ( Very very essential for your Data Centre Infrastructure to function optimally but is going to be expensive & will again need lots of Electricity(Power))
3.Space ( REAL ESTATE costs are growing like anything. More than the Servers,Storage,Network equipment it is the Real Estate cost that is becoming expensive - Data Centres are facing a huge space crunch today & this problem is going to increase exponentially in future )

Virtualization can solve these 3 critical problems effectively & economically. Server Virtualization or Server Consolidation through Host Virtualization can bring a huge savings for Data Centre if implemented,utilized properly. This workshop is an effort to showcase the true benefits of Vmware Virtual Infrastructure 3 which can solve many of the problems including the 3 mentioned above. Please email vmwarejobs@gmail.com to register immediately.

Software Career Counselling Personally talk & get guidance from an IT Professional

Many people write to me asking for guidance for their career. It becomes difficult since to guide someone we need to

Understand him/her well,
Understand what are the skillset or expertise this person has
What are the Career aspirations or Goals of the person
How can the person reach those Goals efficiently (Fast)
What should be his/her short term goals
What should be his/her immediate steps & what decisions should he/she make

People always crave to talk to someone about these things & they rarely find anyone. Its hard these days to get someone who has patience to hear about your career plans. Its even harder to get anyone who can guide you for a better career.

More than emails talking to a professional in person can make a big difference & if that professional can give some solid tips thats invaluable. Many of my blog readers email me asking to play such a role but due to personal reasons I will not be able to do that.

I have a friend in Bangalore who had accepted to do this difficult task. He is willing to listen and guide people in person ( All you Bangaloreans can meet & talk to him in person ) or through voice chat (Online). I am still working out all the details for the blog readers as to how they can reach out & get his suggestions. It may take some time for me to write an update on the same. But you can email him at " highsalary2007@gmail.com ".

It has been my experience that anything available for free people just use & forget. It eventually looses its value if something like "Personal Counselling" is given for free. So this service is going to be a paid service. The fee for the same will be decided based on your profile. You need to email your tech,educational details & write about what you need to discusss. You will get a reply back with in 4 days time with a schedule to meet in person or talk through a voice chat. The fee for this IT / Software Career Guidance will also be mentioned in the reply. If you are fine with these details you can confirm & reply back else let the professional know that you can not go ahead with this.

The fee for this service is going to be very nominal thats for sure.

This is not done with an intention of making huge money - a Consulting project can bring better money than doing this for my friend. He is interested to help people especially those who are still in the planning phase for their Software Career. Do write & let your thoughts known on this.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Vmware Training Virtual Infrastructure Hands On Training in only 5 days

There is a huge huge demand for Virtualization professionals. There are more than 100 people searhing daily for "Vmware Training", "ESX Training" , Vmware Virtualization certification" & "VI3 Training" searching on this blog. Many people who type these keywords in Google are finding this blog as Top search result & visiting this blog. Many of you are also emailing me to know about Vmware training info. Here is a very good news for all of you who are interested to Learn this Hot technology.
You can attend "Instructor Led" and also "Online" 5 days VI3 training covering

Virtual Infrastructure product suite :
ESX 3.0,
Virtual Center Server,
Vmware HA,
Vmware DRS,
Vmware SMP.

This is a complete hands on session where you will be doing more labs than learning theory.

FEE for this 5 day course is very very less compared to all other places .
It is only $1000. Yes it is only $1000.
The normal fee for this course is around $3000 to $4500 anywhere u check out on the web.

Please email vmwarejobs@gmail.com if you are serious to take this course.The schedule of the training will be informed through email only for seriously interested people. There will be more information about the classes shared on upcoming updates on this blog.

Almost all major companies starting from Intel,AMD,IBM,HP,Sun Microsystems,Oracle to consulting companies like Accenture,HCL,CTS every company are hiring Virtualization professionals. This training gives a huge advantage as you get to learn a strong technology in a very little time.

Please email vmwarejobs@gmail.com giving your tech experience details & which mode of training you are interested in "Live Personal training" or "Online Training"

This training also gives a huge advantage as lots of Interview Questions from Vmware jobs in Major companies will be shared & you get a ready reckoner for your Virtualization job interview preparation.

Friday, November 23, 2007

VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 ESX Server Virtual Center Server Interview Questions

Vmware Technical Interview Questions. I was able to compile good list of 100 Vmware Interview Questions with Answers. Since Vmware is a hot technology & there are lots of job opportunities opening up for Vmware ESX administrator,Vmware Certified Professionals: lot of people are searching for "vmware interview questions" in Google.
I checked this keyword on Google & did'nt find any other website or blog giving info other than this blog "Storage Jobs Blog". Though there are lot of Vmware professionals they are too experienced & they feel this thing called "Interview Questions List" is not a big deal. They have such a cool years of experience & knowledgebase on Vmware that they are busy with their Virtualization project implementation & they DO not have time to attend any interviews. These guys in Vmware Virtualization domain are paid so well that they DO NOT have to worry about changing job or changing company.

Please find below 10 technical questions on Vmware ESX Server , Virtual Center & Virtual Infrastructure 3. More Questions with answers will be posted soon. But apart from this list if you want a single document of 100 Interview Questions with Answers - click on the Paypal Big button at the right side of this blog. This document containing 100 "Vmware technical Interview Questions & Answers" will never be published anywhere it is available for only people who are willing to pay $100. Yes the cost of this document is $100 . Along with this doc you will get several PDF files which detail many technical aspects of Vmware Virtualization which will be given FREE. Anyone who can clear & get a job in Vmware virtualization is going to get a pay of more than US $6000- $9000 Per month. So the price of $100 is less compared to the advantage U have by buying this. Email roger.smithson@gmail.com for more info.

Below are 10 Interview Questions with Answers on Installation and Upgrade of ESX 3.0.1 and Virtual Center 2.0.1

Installation and Upgrade of ESX 3.0.1 and Virtual Center 2.0.1

1.List the major components of Vmware Infrastructure ?
* The major components of VMware Infrastructure are:
ESX Server host .
Virtual Center Server.
Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Client .
Web browser.
License server.
Database.

2. What are the minimum H/W requirements to install VirtualCenter Server ?
* VirtualCenter Server hardware must meet the following requirements:
Processor : 2.0GHz or higher Intel or AMD x86 processor. Processor requirements can be larger if your database server is also run on the same hardware.

Memory : 2GB RAM minimum. RAM requirements can be larger if your database is run on the same hardware .
Disk storage :Nearly 1GB free disk space
Networking : 10/100 Ethernet adapter minimum (Gigabit recommended).
Scalability : A VirtualCenter Server configured with the hardware minimums can support 20 concurrent clients, 50 ESX Server hosts, and over 1000 virtual machines.

A dual processor VirtualCenter Server with 3GB RAM can scale to 50 concurrent client connections, 100 ESX Server hosts, and over 2000 virtual machines.

3. Which softwares are supported to install Virtual Center Server Software ?
* The VirtualCenter Server is supported as a service on the 32 bit versions of these operating systems :
The Virtual Center installer requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher in order to run.
o Windows 2000 Server SP4 with Update Rollup 1 (Update Rollup 1 can be downloaded from Windows XP Pro (at any SP level)
o Windows 2003 (all releases except 64 bit)

Virtual Center 2.0 installation is not supported on 64 bit operating systems.

4. Which Databases are supported to VirtualCenter ?
* Virtual Center supports the following database formats:
o Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (SP 4 only)
o Oracle 9iR2, 10gR1 (versions 10.1.0.3 and higher only), and 10gR2
o Microsoft MSDE (not supported for production environments)

5. What are the Hardware requirements for Virtual Infrastructure Client ?
* The Virtual Infrastructure Client hardware must meet the following requirements :
o Processor : 266MHz or higher Intel or AMD x86 processor (500MHz recommended).
o Memory . 256MB RAM minimum, 512MB recommended.
o Disk Storage . 150MB free disk space required for basic installation. You must have 55MB free on the destination drive for installation of the program .
o Networking . 10/100 Ethernet adapter (Gigabit recommended).

6. Which softwares are supported for Virtual Infrastructure Client ?
* The Virtual Infrastructure Client is designed for the 32 it versions of these operating systems:
o Windows 2000 Pro SP4
o Windows 2000 Server SP4
o Windows XP Pro (at any SP level)
o Windows 2003 (all releases except 64bit)

The Virtual Infrastructure Client requires the .NET framework 1.1 (included in installation if required).

7. What are the Requirements for VirtualCenter VI Web Access ?
* The VI Web Access client is designed for these browsers :
o Windows . Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, Netscape Navigator 7.0, Mozilla 1.X, Firefox 1.0.7 and higher.
o Linux . Netscape Navigator 7.0 or later, Mozilla 1.x, Firefox 1.0.7 and higher.

8. What are the Minimum Hardware Requirements for ESX Server 3.x ?
* You need the following hardware and system resources to install and use ESX Server.
At least two processors:
o 1500 MHz Intel Xeon and later, or AMD Opteron (32bit mode) .
o 1500 MHz Intel Xeon and later, or AMD Opteron (32bit mode) for Virtual SMP.
o 1500 MHz Intel Viiv or AMD A64 x2 dualcore processors
1GB RAM minimum.
One or more Ethernet controllers. Supported controllers include:
* Broadcom NetXtreme 570x Gigabit controllers
* Intel PRO/100 adapters
For best performance and security, use separate Ethernet controllers for the service console and the virtual machines.
A SCSI adapter, Fibre Channel adapter, or internal RAID controller:
* Basic SCSI controllers are Adaptec Ultra160 and Ultra320, LSI Logic Fusion MPT, and most NCR/Symbios. SCSI controllers.
* RAID adapters supported are HP Smart Array, Dell Perc RAID (Adaptec RAID and LSI MegaRAID), and IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers.
* Fibre Channel adapters supported are Emulex and QLogic host bus adapters (HBAs).
A SCSI disk, Fibre Channel LUN, or RAID LUN with un partitioned space. In a minimum configuration, this disk or RAID is shared between the service console and the virtual machines.

9. Which Storage systems supports for installing and booting ESX Server ?
* ESX Server supports installing and booting from the following storage systems:
IDE/ATA disk drives Installing ESX Server on an IDE/ATA drive or IDE/ATA
RAID is supported. However, you should ensure that your specific drive controller is included in the supported hardware.
Storage of virtual machines is currently not supported on IDE/ATA drives or RAIDs. Virtual machines must be stored on VMFS partitions configured on a SCSI drive, a SCSI RAID, or a SAN.
SCSI disk drives . SCSI disk drives are supported for installing ESX Server. They can also store virtual machines on VMFS partitions.
Storage area networks (SANs) . SANs are supported for installing ESX Server. They can also store virtual machines on VMFS partitions.

10. Enhanced Performance Recommendations for ESX Server
* Some recommendations for enhanced performance:

RAM : Having sufficient RAM for all your virtual machines is important to
achieving good performance. ESX Server hosts require more RAM than typical
Servers : An ESX Server host must be equipped with sufficient RAM to run
concurrent virtual machines, plus run the service console.

Dedicated fast Ethernet adapters for virtual machines : Dedicated Gigabit Ethernet cards for virtual machines, such as Intel PRO/1000 adapters,iimprove throughput to virtual machines with high network traffic.

Disk location . For best performance, all data used by your virtual machines should be on physical disks allocated to virtual machines. These physical disks should be large enough to hold disk images to be used by all the virtual machines.

VMFS3 partitioning . For best performance, use VI Client or VI Web Access to set up your VMFS3 partitions rather than the ESX Server installer. Using VI Client or VI Web Access ensures that the starting sectors of partitions are 64K aligned, which improves storage performance.

Processors . Faster processors improve ESX Server performance. For certain workloads, larger caches improve ESX Server performance.

Hardware compatibility . To ensure the best possible I/O performance and workload management, VMware ESX Server provides its own drivers for supported devices. Be sure that the devices you plan to use in your server are supported.

VMware Technical Rounds Interview questions

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Fast Solution to Get a High Paying Job in the Best Technology Company

Is there a fast solution to get a Good job?

Can I somehow get a very good salary job fast?

What should I do to get that dream job soon ?

These are some of the questions many people email me with & people search frequently online. I am trying to list solutions,answers for these questions.

1.Best Time Management : Get to know Which company pays highest & Which profile does it pay a very good salary for.

2.Learn Fast Retain most : If you already suit above profile then you are lucky if not then you need to learn lots of stuff fast & also should retain a lot. More than anything a company wanna hire an experienced expert & not some one very good in theory. So u need to work fast, work smart & then learn from others experience. Internet helps u a lot in this. An example is this blog which has lots of interview questions highlighting what topics to stress more.Also videos which explain & show the things. In future I will write about tech topics along with their practical configuration etc which are practical.

3.Have a good Support System : Who can get you inside information or can help you get some advantage like who can teach you Server administration in a crash course, who can let you know which company is hiring in your nearby place, who can help you know how you can setup your own scaled down storage lab etc etc . You basically need someone who is more than a good friend.

4.Stick to the goal & be very positive : Results will not happen in a day. So you need to have consistency in your efforts. If I say read all 100+ posts on this blog & you will get a job for sure - how many of this blog's readers will try that. I am sure not even 1 person can have the patience to read all 100+ posts on this blog. But to my amazement a guy from Japan has gone through all the posts on this blog & taken print out made it as a small reference book. He emailed me yesterday saying that he got a nice job since he used this blog as his support system. Yes for him this blog served the purpose of being more than a friend. I am glad someone made a very positive use of the amount of knowledge available on this blog.

If you feel its tough to read all 100+ posts then read the important ones atleast the interview questions related blog posts , which I'm listing below :

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Cognos Author Report Studio Modelling Framework Manager

Need urgent candidates for US,UK opportunities. Please rush your resume immediately to roger.smithson@gmail.com

Cognos 5+ Years Experienced People Required Very Urgently

Preferably graduated in IT or equivalent by experience
§ At least 5 years of relevant experience with Cognos and/or Informatica
* Cognos 7/8 Author (Report Studio) & Modelling (Framework Manager) :
very good knowledge/experience
* Cognos Transformer + datamanager : : very good knowledge/experience
* Informatica PowerCenter 6/7/8 : very good knowledge/experience
* Report design
* Cognos PowerPlay (OLAP) / Reportnet: (very) good knowledge/experience
* Oracle reports - discoverer
§ Functional business knowledge is a major asset
§ Excellent communication skills (both oral and written).
§ Team player
§ Eager to learn, potential to learn quickly, open to further education
§ Business to Business attitude
§ Client focus
§ Good language skills: English

These Job openings in Cognos ,Datawarehousing are to be hired immediately hence send your resumes immediately to roger.smithson@gmail.com

How Can I Get into High Paying IT Career : How to be hired by best paying companies

People Keep asking How is the future of Storage career, What are the opportunities in Storage technology ,answer is here "Beginner Wants to Know about his future in Storage Technology"

How Can I Get Storage Job
Index of articles on Storage jobs blog
How to get High Salary Software jobs
Salary structure in Software Companies
Where to start your preparation for a Storage Career
Is this a High Paid Career Storage career
Salary in Storage Companies

Interview Questions on Virtualization,Storage,Linux,Unix administration,Networking :1000 Questions on this blog

This blog has nearly 1000 Interview Questions on

Virtualization
Storage Technology
System Administration
Network Administration

Many more interview questions sent by blog readers,friends,people who attended these interviews will be posted every hour on this blog. This blog will be updated every hour from now on. Keep reading & email ur feedback to roger.smithson@gmail.com

Every day 1000 people are searching on google for the keyword "Virtualization" and 100 or more are searching for "vmware interview questions" seems like there is a explosive growth in Virtualization technology & all big companies in this Hot technology domain want to hire scores of professionals. So many are getting interviews in Virtualization related job profiles & they are searching on google for most probable questions .So here are the Virtualization Technology related interview questions
Virtualization Jobs Blog
VMware Interview questions
Virtualization Technical Interview
Vmware interview rounds
Storage & Virtualization interview questions

More than 100 Interview Questions from Vmware Technical Interview rounds

Thursday, November 08, 2007

100 Interview questions from Vmware Virtualization technology

If you need 100 Interview questions collected from people who attended interviews at EMC2,Vmware,IBM,Microsoft,Citrix,HP,Cisco

email roger.smithson@gmail.com

its gonna cost $24 for 100 Interview questions only for the list of 100 Interview Questions (Only Questions)

If you are also looking for answers - you can clearly realise that answers are lengthy & bit complex so answers for 100 Interview questions cost $100.

So please specify clearly if you just want 100 Interview questions ($24) or You want
100 Interview Questions with Answers ($100)

You can pay through paypal , and can also use your credit card via paypal interface.

There will be many more interview questions posted from Storage , Virtualization , Server Consolidation , Disaster Recovery , Backup technologies in next few hours. Keep reading this blog daily for I will for sure update this daily.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Vmware interview questions third round of technical interview in IBM

1. Explain the physical topology of Virtual Infrastructure 3 Data Centre ?

2. How do you configure Clusters,Hosts,Resource Pools in VI3 ?

3. What are resource pools & whats the advantage of implementing them ?

4. Explain why Vmware ESX Server is preferred over Virtual Server or Workstation for enterprise implementation ?

5. In what different scenarios or methods can you manage a VI3 ?

6. Explain the difference between access through Virtual Infrastructure Client (vi client), Web access, Service Console access(ssh) ?

7. Explain advantages or features of Vmware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) ?

8. What are the types of datastores supported in ESX3.0 ?

9. How can you configure these different types of datastores on ESX2.5 ?

10.What is Vmware Consolidate Backup (VCB) ? Explain your work exposure in this area ?

11.How do you configure Vmware Virtual Centre Management Server for HA & DRS ? What are the conditions to be satisfied for this setup ?

12.Explain your work related to below terms :
VM Provisioning:
Alarms & Even Management:
Task Scheduler:
Hardware Compatibility List:

13.What SAN or NAS boxes have you configured VMware with ? How did you do that ?

14.What kind of applications or setups you have on you Virtual Machines ?

15.Have you ever faced ESX server crashing and Virtual Centre Server crash? How do you know the cause of these crashes in these cases ?

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Companies in Virtualization Technology : Vmware,Microsoft,Xen,Virtual Iron

VMware is a market leader in Virtualization segment winning loads of customers every year. Since more customers are planning for implementing Virtual Infrastructure in their Data Centres demand for IT professionals with Virtualization experience is growing heavily. So many system administrators and network administrators are taking lot of interest in Vmware products like VI3 (Virtual Infrastructure 3), ESX Server, Virtual Centre, VMware Lab Manager, P2V etc. You will get to read about all these products on this blog. Also check out Virtualization Career Blog.

I've got news from some of my blog readers that
-Microsoft is hiring heavily for its Virtual Server Team
-Citrix may hire more people for its Xen & Virtualization team
-Vmware & EMC2 both are on a hiring spree & they may increase their Virtualization expertise team two fold soon
-Cisco has developed its core expertise,R & D centre on Network virtualization team & that team is also looking for many professionals to hire

So many people are searching for this term
"vmware interview questions" ,
"virtualization interviews" ,
"virtualization career" ,
"microsoft virtual server interview questions"
"Xen Virtualization implementation",
"Implementing Virtual Infrastructure",

So i've already started posting some of the interview questions related to Virtualization , vmware , EMC2 & u can find the first article "First round Vmware Interview Questions"
One more interview questions list related to Virtualization & VMware in Technical Interview Questions on Vmware virtualization

More interview questions will be posted every day.So keep reading this blog.

Vmware Interview Questions Virtualization Vmotion HA DRS Disaster Recovery

Knowledge & work exposure in storage , networking , security , enterprise servers deployment is also very essential if you want to build your career in Virtualization. So do read all other materials/posts on this blog which cover all these above mentioned topics.

Some more interview questions from Vmware Technical Interviews

1. Explain your Virtualization Implementation?

2. What are the advantages of Virtualization ?

3. Which company's products you've worked on for your Virtulization projects?

4. Difference between XEN and Vmware virtualization product suites?

5. What is Live Migration & Cold Migration ?

6. To configure Storage on ESX Server what are the conditions to be met ?

6. Using NAS or iSCSI how can you create datastores on an ESX server?

7. What is HA? Explain HA configuration that you've done?

8. Difference between HA and DRS ?

9. How do you know how many NICs are configured in ESX server

10.Diffrence b/w vCPU and pCPU ?

11.What is the difference between vSwitch & pSwitch?

12. what is VLAN? Whats the advantage of using a VLAN ?

13.How do you configure active directory,DNS,Samba servers if I give u only an ESX Server machine & another client machine ?

14.How do you configure security for your Virtual Infrastructure ?

15.Explain some performance improvements tweaks for a Virtual infrastructure ?

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Storage Testing Virtualization Training in Bangalore at a reasonable price

Here is a training on Storage fundamentals, Testing & Virtualization Technology given by people working in these fields. So far many people have been trained & also got jobs in some of the best paying companies like :

HP
Accenture
EMC2
ACS
HCL
Wipro
PCS
Mindtree

More than just bragging about it why not go check out the classes for yourself & see if it helps your career. I've been getting very positive feedback about this training place hence thought of including it for your use.

Course Coverage :
Storage Fundamentals
Storage protocols :SCSI,SAS,SATA
FC Protocol in detail
SAN
NAS
iSCSI
RAID & Disk management

Testing
Testing Process
Test Life cycle
Defect Management
Bug Life cycle

Virtualization
Importance & the exciting technology : Introduction to Virtualization
Data Centre problems & How Virtualization can solve them
Virtualization companies, products
Vmware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Intro
Installation & Configuration of ESX Server 3.0
Creation & Management of Virtual Machines
Resource Pools
High Availability
Distributed Resource Scheduling
Troubleshooting

Since these are some of the hottest topics & also very much in demand technologies I think its time you think of them as a Career option. Email jobsulike@gmail.com if you want to join this training.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Unix administrator interview questions Linux and Network Administrators too can benefit from this

These are interview questions asked in HP,IBM,Sun Microsystems to one of the blog reader. I thank him for sending & sharing these interview questions.

1.how do u find the CPU utilization ?
2.how do u find the number of CPU have in the machine ? what are the commands to add CPU ? What is core? What is quad core,dual core ?
3.if you are using Veritas volume manager,how do u find the maximum volume size you can create in the disk ?
4.if your veritas product licence expired and you want your system as usual or you want revert back?
how do you do ?
5.what is hard link and what is softlink?
6.what is difference between NAS and SAN?
7.how do you make NIS from the scratch ? difference between NIS +
8 some unix commands,in the case of solaris ,they willask "meta commands" for volume ?
7 useradd ,delete commands all parameters?
8.will ask about present project and the problem faced on the projects ?
9.best achievement ? how many people working under you ?
10. steps for adding disk,creating swap,increasing volume size ?
11.what are the steps follows for security purpose ?how do u find how many people using root password ?
12.what are the key things holding for disaster kit ?
13 what about back up job ?
14 what are the server using ?latest server ? versions of the OS ? difference between the previous version ?

in SAN few questions.they start with some general questions like

1 what is the future of SAN ?what is OSN ?
2 why do you want become SAN admin ? why people are still using NAS ?
3.give me some hardware name ,you are using ?
4.How do you give initial planning ,estimate to procure these storage hardware ?
5.What are the factors you consider while deploying storage solutions
6.What are your experience interacting with Customers & solving their storage issues?

More interview questions will be updated daily so email roger.smithson@gmail.com if you need more questions .

VMware interview questions Virtualization is the hottest Technology now

Vmware Interview questions : Some basic questions which were asked in the first round of interview. There were nearly 5 to 8 rounds of interview based on the designation.

1.What is virtualization ?

2.What are the major problems in Data centers today?

3.What basic factors are to be considered apart from Servers,Hardware while planning for a Data centre setup ?

4.How Can Virtualization solve some of the problems being faced by todays Data Centre

5.What are the advantages of Vmware Virtualization?

6.Which products of Vmware have you worked on? How & where did you work on them?

7.What versions of Vmware products have you implemented or had exposure working with?

8.Which are the other companies who are in Virtualization domain?

9.What are the competing products against Vmware's & in what way Vmware products differ from them ?

10.Explain your virtualization experience? Which virtualization project have you worked on?

11.What was your role & what features of VMware products have you used ?

12.Explain your work exposure in Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) ?

13.How do you install & configure different components of VI3 ?

14.How do you configure Vmotion? What are the conditions to be met for Vmotion? What is Vmotion or Live Migration?

15.How do you configure High Availability(HA) in Virtual Centre ?

16.How was DRS(Distributed Resource Scheduling) implemented in your project?

17.What is snapshot? Whats the use of it in Vmware products?

18.Explain the architecture of VMware ESX Server ?

19.Can you explain what these terms are VMkernel, VMM , Service Console , Console OS?

More interview questions will be posted by tomorrow. For answers plz email roger.smithson@gmail.com - U need to pay for the answers :)

Thursday, September 06, 2007

200 interview questions on SCSI FC RAID SAN Solaris SAN Design

Hi Aron

Thanks for your interest & faith in me. I thank you for placing the order on the blog for 200 interview questions at $24.

What you paid was for 200 Interview questions only. But still i want to appreciate your payment & hence you will find answers also for almost 200 interview questions on storage essential topics attached in this email . Anyone who can put time & dedication to read through all these documents can win any Storage job .There are more than 100 people as proof for this who got job offers who used these materials as their core preparation reference guides. so I request you to make the best use of these resources .

These questions were collected from the real interviews attended in almost all major storage companies.

Please DO NOT forward these materials to any body. It usually happens you will forward to your close friend & he will forward to his close friends & thus it reaches more than 1000 people .It happens like some one copies it on his website or blog so every one can have it. I am requesting you NOT to forward this to anyone.I want people to appreciate the effort gone into preparation of these materials. People many times do not value/appreciate what they get for free so if someone is really dedicated they will read through all the articles on this blog & can get the infromation . On the other hand if someone is not having time to read through and want to pay & get all interview questions with answers they can email roger.smithson@gmail.com so that they support this blog to grow. I hope you understand my request.

Please email your feedback & suggestions .Let me know what you feel about this package.

As a thank you from my side find some quick reference guides,advanced SAN Design guide from a major storage company attached & some more detailed guides on the topics I've covered in interview questions.

U also get a bonus HR interview questions answers pdf as well as a SAN Student guide FREE

Find these 19 documents attached in the email I am sending you.

Keep emailing me your progress & I'm sure you can prepare fast for your interviews with these reference materials on storage.

Best Regards
Roger

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Storage jobs blog Interview Questions has more than 150 blog posts[Blog articles]

I am very happy to share that this blog has grown with more than 150 articles(blog posts).

Click on "Blog Archive" at the bottom right hand corner below "Friendfinder" image. You can click through the year,dates & the article titles to read all important articles.

It is really a nice milestone for me as an author of this blog to complete. I love to share stories that too stories which can inspire others. So let me share a little story (history) about this blog.(You will not find any personal info about me though- I am sorry but I like to remain at the background & let this blog do its work better).

This blog was started in 2006 August 25th with the intention of helping people get better career guidance in Information Technology. If you are a new visitor to this blog & if you are not sure what Storage or SAN is all about then we are talking about Computer Data Storage & How real big enterprises manage or store data .

There was & There will always be a huge need for Storage professionals.

Even today when I talk to many Storage company teams they are expressing that there is a huge number of job openings for storage professionals. But, But the main thing is there are not many good candidates & even worse, there is no proper stream to guide/train/motivate people to explore career options in storage.

So I thought let me start this small blog where I can post few tips & share some stories to help people get some guidance in this highly lucrative Storage technology.

I have recieved more than 1000 emails till today (my email id is roger.smithson@gmail.com ) & there are atleast 20 emails on an average everyday. I try to reply to every email but sometimes i do miss.

This blog has given me a lot of satisfaction as it has helped more than 100 people get job in just last 6 months. These are the people who replied back saying this blog helped. There are also innumerable blog readers who benefited from the blog but forgot to email me :)

Anyway more than emails I am interested in how well this blog can help someone like YOU, who had taken out time to visit & read through the articles. I really appreciate your visit to this blog & would love to see an email from you with a feedback.I will try to improve the content & quality of this blog. I understand the ads have been a bit of annoyance but due to some reasons I request you to consider it as a small servicefee for the amount of things this blog is offering for FREE.

If you just spare 10 minutes to browse though the previous posts apart from posts on this page you will find real people sharing their story of how they got their Career in Storage or related technologies like Backup,Network Management,System administration etc. So please take time & bookmark this blog .Visit regularly to read all the latest updates.

I've made up a resolution to update this blog daily & if possible every 4 hours once. You will find many interesting things soon apart from Interview Questions & Tutorials. Also you will get a FREE Storage Student Guide if you email roger.smithson@gmail.com

Keep reading this blog & forward the weblink http://storage-jobs.blogspot.com to all your friends or loved ones whom you think can benefit from this.

Thanks for your support

Senior Positions in Storage industries in INDIA

Almost all Storage companies are struggling to hire for Senior positions.Companies like

EMC2/Vmware
Netapp
Brocade
Cisco
Qlogic
Emulex
Adaptec
LSI Logic
Dell
HP
IBM
Sun Microsystems/Storagetek
Microsoft
Seagate
Lefthand Networks
Computer Associates (CA)
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)
Fujitsu
Symantec/Veritas
Inmage

All above companies are on a heavy hiring so many recruiters are emailing me for the resumes/CV of people who are interested.

So anyone who has more than 3-4 years experience (and above) please forward your resumes/CV to roger.smithson@gmail.com and let me know your interests.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Interesting SAN Setup of one of the blog reader -

Hi Roger,

I sent an email to u last week for SAN Guide and still waiting for your erply
Regards
Gerry
------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Gerry,
Sorry for delayed reply but some how i missed forwarding you the Storage tutorial guide. Please find it attached in this email along with some more additional student reference materials. Now what will u share from ur side :)
People always take help/resources but never do anything in return.

I appreciate if you differ & do contribute any original articles from ur experience for the blogs. I send more useful reference materials to people who contribute original articles to this blog written from their work/tech experience.

Rgds
Roger
------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi. Roger,

How r u doing ? I guess fine. I got ur all three Emails. I am very Grateful to u for sending me such a brilliant material about SAN etc.
I Apologize, if you are hurt from my last Email, I am extremely sorry for that.
And i respect ur thought that, People always take help but never do anything in return. But I am not like that, i will definetly contribute some original articles.
As far as my job profile is concerned, I am a Storage Professional,working in an MNC. I am in this position from last 4years.

Regards
Gerry
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gerry,
im not hurt u were right in ur email - i missed so its my fault im sorry for that

anyway ur reply was really nice & I am happy to have come across a person like you.
how long u've been reading the blog & did it help in anyway
What is your present job role & tasks you are responsible for

plz do write in detail about yourself & ur work challenges & what sort of storage products/vendors u r working with.

Rgds
Roger
------------------------------------------------------------------
About my SAN Setup
Currently i am working on SAN Technology.My SAN setup contains

a) 2 IBM Servers ( eSeries & xSeries) having Operating Systems as RHEL5, SLES,Solaris 10.2 Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers

b) 5 Sunblade 2000 sparc Servers (HP xw 4300 Model) Having Operating system Solaris 9 & Solaris 10.

Sunblade 2000 & Ultra 10.

c) 3 Avocent Console Machines used for monitoring the Servers setup.

d) Storage from Sun Storagetek and EMC2, one is Fibre Channel Storage & another is iSCSI.
RAID Level implemented is RAID-5
No. of Hard Disks in Fibre Storage is 15 each of 200 GB
No. of Hard Disks in iSCSI is 12each of 300 GB

e) 2 Storage Tek Tape Library 1 is Base and the other is expansion (SL500 Model) which contains total 56 slots for Digital Tapes Drives. (40 DLT Used & 16 SDLT used in the slots).

f) SUN ACSLS (Automatic Cartridge system Library Software) Machine (SUN BLADE 2000 Model) It is used to control the Robotic Arm inside the Tape Library.

Below is image of StorageTek Automated Cartridge System (ACS), with robot arms manipulating up to 6,000 tape cartridges

g) 4 Network Switches
1 Brocade Silkworm : 2gbps
1 Qlogic SANbox : 4gbps
2 Intel Gigabit ethernet switch

This is all about the SAN setup on which i am working. My job profile is to maintain the whole Setup like
a) Plan for the setup from the scratch
b) Design & get approvals for the design of the whole infrastructure
c) Procure & Deploy the Servers,Network,Storage,Racks etc
d) Configure & install the whole system
a) To train engineers to monitor the network,storage & servers
b) To maintain the servers,storage & networks.

------------------------------------------------------
1 minute reading links

How to Get job in Storage technology

Storage job openings in EMC2,Netapp,HP,Sun Microsystems

Vmware Interview Questions Storage

Veritas Interview Questions

Software Testing Tutorial

Email conversation with one of the Blog reader who is interested in learning more Storage but passionate to work as a programmer

Hi Roger,

Thanks a ton for writing a blog on Storage career opportunities and thanks for sending those Storage tutorial pdf materials.
Though i am working for a storage company for about an year,i am still perplexed with
storage complexities,market requirement, storage technologies
(DAS,NAS,SAN,SCSI,iSCSI to name a few), and i was unsure of my career roadmap as well,but after finding so many kool stuff on your blog,i'm excited with joy and aspiration.

~Aron
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Aron

thanks for your email nice to know your feedback .
So do write more about ur tech experience & how is your work on storage.
what are the challenges& responsibilities you handle.

Rgds
Roger
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Roger,

I'm working as a Quality Assurance-engineer( Some call the same designation as Product Verification Engineer or Product Testing Enginner) and my task involves certifying Backup & Volume Manager(which is basically an management interface which ultimately talks to SAS Storage devices & iSCSI drivers)and file system features, using already developed testsuites & testscripts.
(which mean not much is there for me to develop,beside fixing testsetup related bugs)
,beside this i do a little bit of troubleshooting and automation using perl,shell scripts.
Due to lack of bandwidth here (in my organisation) and company policies,i am not able
to sharpen my skills in systems programming and kernel level programming(which is my passion),i'm looking for opportunities where my primary work is doing what i love most(programming).hence i'm looking for such opportunities in storage domain.

Impatiently waiting to hear from you,
~Aron
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Aron

I am sorry for delayed reply. I'd have loved to reply earlier but due to some hectic schedule I got a chance to do that only now. So i understand your mind to some extent. May be few lines from my thoughts may be of some help to You

Since you are saying you are much interested in programming you can gain more expertise in that by participating in some open source storage projects : where u get lot of freedom but the only problem is no pay :)

So if you are aiming for getting into a job where they pay well & allow you to code then I would say gain more in depth knowledge on as much storage fundamentals as u can - this way you can clear lots of Bigger storage company interviews which pay well & they definitely need someone to come for programming role for their storage business solutions.

So improve your programming skills as well as gain very good grip on major storage concepts like Fibre Channel,SAN,iSCSI,FS Switches,Storage arrays etc & then I can send you some documents to help you get going on these.

write to me what is your expected pay package if u wanna change & whats the present pay.I will see if there are any chances for something to be done to help you.

I do not want to promise much but if you work hard & constantly email me your progress I can definitely guide you to some extent - But ultimately I like to see long emails detailing what you are studying & how you are learning things & gaining more expertise :

I may publish some of our conversation on the blog (Removing all personal details & other confidential details) so I want people who share lot of tech stuff from their side & I will help them as much as I can

Rgds
Roger

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Roger,

Thanks a lot for sharing words of wisdom with me.
Those pdfs are really kool, thanks again.

I work on SGI ,Solaris ,Linux platform and work closely with Volume managers.
Recently i got some Vmware virtualization exposure and these days i'm trying to explore more about it.
Thank god we have vmtn.com ,which is an awesome site with zillions of information on vmware virtualization
and beyond. I've learned a lot from forums at this site.This is a must visit site and i must say that if anyone is serious to learn Vmware ESX Server or Virtual Centre and art of troubleshooting then join forums here.

Also whenever i get time, i practice programing.
I'm almost done with "Advanced programming in UNIX" by Richard Stevans,which
gave me good insight of UNIX APIs.
Beside this i'm reading some books on OS and Linux kernel,which are:
a) "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
b) "Linux Kernel Development" by Robert Love.
c) "Linux Device Drivers" -3rd Edition

Roger, Thanks for taking out your precious time and writing to me.I'll certainly keep you updated with my latest learnings and experience in storage domain.

Regards
Aron

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I got job in IBM reading this blog everyday & studying all the materials :Blog Reader Sean Joy

My name is ShiV.(Blog Reader) I got job in one of the biggest company IBM though I came from Mechanical Engineering background. and I am proud to say that i am a regular reader of this blog and it is the first time i am sharing my struggles and experience for a job and in the end getting a job in the biggest IT company. I got a dream job in IBM because of my hardwork & with the help of reading this Storage blog regularly.

I passed out from college in 2001 in Mechanical engineering. but always wanted to build my career in IT field.i was looking for a suitable opportunity to start off as i had done courses like C,C++,java. but at that time job market was in slump and my career was going nowhere inspite of great percentage and strong analytical and aptitude skills.I then started working as a tech support and got frustrated with that job as i did not want a call centre job.i was studying side by side for some software companies interviews .

I hardly used to get time for sleep as I had to work night shift of tech support & also used to come back & make time to read other materials. I started looking for a course which can give me an edge above others.luckily i found out a course comprising of TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) AIX basics, Windows 2003 Server and Networking and being the first Storage batch i did not have much guidance as its a brand new field so I started learning on my own .I used to regularly come to this Storage jobs blog and seek guidance and knowledge.I read all the articles on this blog which are now more than 150 . I read many pdf's regarding SAN, TSM concepts,configuration, implementation,problem determination guides etc.and also other websites like Virtualization blog , Testing Blog,Datawarehousing Tutorials so I can know maximum about Storage & related technologies . I also concentrated more on command line as my opinion is its easy to lean GUI but if you want to be clear about the basics then use command line.then i sat for IBM interview.

In the Storage Interview the interviewers asked all the basic stuff about storage like :
reclaimation,
collocation,
policy management,
scheduling,
SAN,NAS ,DAS
etc

it was a 3 round interview extremely tough consisting of all the knowledge we had gathered

Ist round was written 100 marks consisting of all knowledge of AIX and storage.Storage part included all basic and advanced concepts of
LUN masking,
zoning,
RAID,
fibre channel classes of services,
FC topologies,
scsi,iscsi etc.(this blog really helped me because all above topics are covered on this blog )

2nd round was the best..they installed Tivoli Storage Manager(TSM) server and client on a m/c and gave us real time scenarios and we had to show them how to troubleshoot on command line some eg . of scenarios :
Issues with database ,
recovery log getting full ,
low scratch tapes no.
disk storage pool full what will happen to client sessions
schedules failed
etc

3rd round was seminar..topic from SNIA website we have to choose.(.I chose Storage Consolidation and Virtualization -when where how and why) i must say one of the videos i found on this blog really did help me it was a guy explaining about the same..

after all this they selected only 6 people and i got through and now joined IBM as TSM system admin .It is a dream come true for me it was a long journey from being a night shift guy handling Tech support to a IT Professional working in a prestigious company like IBM on a normal shift :) in Hyderabad.

My first role will be i think Storage Management,Disaster Recovery administration but i want to gradually learn as much as possible like SAN or Virtualization

hope this experince helps those who are struggling remember one thing :IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. thanks roger for this wonderful blog

Friday, August 24, 2007

Technical Interview Round for Storage & SAN Support engineer

I had to wait for nearly 40 minutes for the secound round of Technical interview. Read previous post (below post) Wipro Storage Interview to know what they asked in HR round.

There were very few guys in storage/SAN who came for this interview though it was a widely publicised walkin. There were more than 60 guys each for Software Testing, Java Development, Dotnet programming , Oracle ,Networking etc but for Storage hardly 5 guys came for the interview. This boosted my confidence - I was already imagining that I will definitely be given offer letter. Read the full posts to get all the details of this experience.

Second round was taken by two guys one seemed like a lead & another an engineer with little experience. Lead asked most of the questions & the new engineer asked twisted questions out of my own answers - it was more of a verification of my confidence in the subject.

Questions asked in that technical round of interview were like:
1. What kind of Storage Solutions have you worked on ?
2. Describe customer scenarios which you worked in & what problem did I resolve with my Storage knowledge ?
3. What Storage subsystems I have working experience on ?
4. Which vendor equipments I've used ?
5. How did you configure a SAN box from scratch ?
6. How do I plan , provision & manage Lun creation for different teams withing an organization ?
7. What are the difficulties I've faced in optimally utilizing the Storage infrastructure ?
8. What troubleshooting I've done & what are the steps I've followed ?
9. How different is it to manage a FC SAN & an iSCSI SAN ?
10.Mentioned some of the major company Storage products mention their specifications , limitations & performance comparisons ?
11. How will I manage if I have to work with Vmware Virtualization in my infrastructure do I have any exposure with ESX Server Administration or with Virtual Infrastructure management ?
12. What are the High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery Solutions (DR) I've implemented & how did I work out all the initial planning,designing,implementation & maintenance?
13. What is Zoning ? Mention types of Zoning & What Zoning options are available in which company products ?
14. What is Storage Virtualization & Storage Consolidation ?
15. Explain RAID5,RAID50,RAID10,RAID6,RAID3 which one is prefered & when ?

More details about how the interview went on will be posted in next 30 minutes keep reading .

Dont forget to see job openings for Storage in EMC2,HP,Wipro & many major companies in Storage Jobs Blog

For People who are interested to learn manual application Testing find real company Testing Interview Questions by clicking Testing Materials Website

A Storage Interview Experience from one of the blog reader

Wipro Storage Interview Experience interview attended on 15 August 2007.

Job : Storage & SAN Support Engineer

Number of Rounds :

Initial screening was done through a HR round where there were usual things like :
1. Tell me about your self
2. Tell me about your previous experience
3. How were the team structure or company hierarchy in previous companies
4. What are the tasks & responsibilities you handled in present/previous job
5. Why are you leaving that job
6. Why This company & How can you say that you will stick in this job for a long time
7. What do you look for in your new job
8. What are your strengths & how they helped in your job
9. What are your weaknesses & how are you working to overcome them
10.Why should we hire you?
11.What are your salary expectations ? What is your present CTC & expected CTC ? Notice period & any issue in relocating ?

Next Rounds will details with questions will be posted in the next blog post within next 30 minutes.

If you want to see many job openings in Storage & System administration find them in Storage Jobs Blog

Check out Software Testing Jobs Blog for lots more Testing Interview Questions

Storage Area Network Career High Salary Software Jobs Blog Videos PDF downloads

Buy Vmware Interview Questions & Storage Interview Questions for $150. Get 100+ Interview Questions with Answers. You'll get download link immediately after payment.Click below button to pay & Get it.
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