SAN jobs interview questions - Storage Area Networking job interviews Series 2

Below are the 10 questions asked in an interview with SAN company StorageTek .
1) Which are the SAN topologies?

Answer :SAN can be connected in 3 types which are mentioned below:
Point to Point topology
FC Arbitrated Loop ( FC :Fibre Channel )
Switched Fabric

2) Which are the 4 types of SAN architecture types
Answer :Core-edge
Full-Mesh
Partial-Mesh
Cascade

3) which command is used in linux to know the driver version of any hardware device ?
Answer : dmesg

4) How many minimum drives are required to create R5 ( RAID 5) ?

Answer : You need to have at least 3 disk drives to create R5.

5) Can you name some of the states of RAID array ?

Answer : There are states of RAID arrays that represent the status of the RAID arrays which are given below
online
Degraded
Rebuilding
Failed

6) Name the features of SCSI-3 standard ?

Answer : QAS: Quick arbitration and selection
Domain Validation
CRC: Cyclic redundancy check

7) Can we assign a hot spare to R0 (RAID 0)array?

Answer :No, since R0 is not redundant array, failure of any disks results in failure of the entire array so we cannot rebuild the hot spare for the R0 array.

8) Can you name some of the available tape media types ?

Answer :There are many types of tape media available to back up the data some of them are
DLT :digital linear tape - technology for tape backup/archive of networks and servers; DLT technology addresses midrange to high-end tape backup requirements.
LTO :linear tape open; a new standard tape format developed by HP, IBM, and Seagate.
AIT :advanced intelligent tape; a helical scan technology developed by Sony for tape backup/archive of networks and servers, specifically addressing midrange to high-end backup requirements.

9) what is HA ?

Answer : HA High Availability is a technology to achive failover with very less latency. Its a practical requirement of data centers these days when customers expect the servers to be running 24 hours on all 7 days around the whole 365 days a year - usually referred as 24x7x365. So to achieve this a redundant infrastructure is created to make sure if one database server or if one app server fails there is a replica Database or Appserver ready to takeover the operations. End customer never experiences any outage when there is a HA network infrastructure.

10) What is virtualization?

Answer :Virtualization is logical representation of physical devices. It is the technique of managing and presenting storage devices and resources functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location.Virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in a storage area network (SAN). The management of storage devices can be tedious and time-consuming. Storage virtualization helps the storage administrator perform the tasks of backup, archiving, and recovery more easily, and in less time, by disguising the actual complexity of the SAN.
Virtualization is a topic of real importance and will be covered in detail in one of our future blogpost.

PLZ READ FIRST SERIES IN REAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AT SAN or Storage engineer position - Interview questions : Series1 ?

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This blog is aimed to help JOB seekers find a Good technology job in SAN or Storage Area Networking. We have below postings to empower you with information which makes all the difference in winning a job offer letter.

Each of the below given links contains very powerful information which you may NOT find anywhere else - So read each of these job postings & get the Winning edge.
1. What is SAN ?
2. What are the JOB opportunities in SAN ?
3. Which are the companies in SAN and How much they pay ?
4. How Can I Enter SAN industry ?
5. What are the tasks of a SAN professional- How will be a day in his office life ?
6. How will be a SAN job interview ?
7. SAN or Storage engineer position - Interview questions : Series1 ?
8. Answers for the SAN interview questions .
9. Can you tell me about some Job Openings in SAN or Storage industry?
10. Do You Want to see an Enterprise SAN infrastructure - Thanks to Dell - Watch this informative Video - See a High End Lab

THANKS TO Sun Microsystems - Video SunFire X4500 Storage Server



Your Comments or Questions regarding this blog or its content are always welcome.
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Comments on Storage jobs blog are very much appreciated

Thanks Jeremiah for the below comment,
Jeremiah Owyang said...
but how do you quantify location differences?
Are jobs in India for SAN The same as Santa Clara?

I agree location differences may be a factor for consideration . But i have done some research and found that the storage needs are increasing in US as well as many european countries. So definitely the need for Storage techies also is increasing . I have done a very basic search in monster on this link jobsearch.monster.com/index.asp?cookie=no ,for keyword "storage area network" and within first 4 pages i have found these many openings mentioned below - so it is very much true that the job requirements are there and the skilled persons are not available in the same ratio.

-Veritas Netbackup Administrator Location: US-CT-Hartford
-SAN/Storage Administratorv Location: Kansas City, MO 64101
-Enterprise AIX and Storage Architect Location: US-TX-Dallas
-Enterprise Storage Analyst Location: Bloomington, IL
-Storage Engineer Salary/Wage: USD 75,000.00 /year Salary Range Begins at: 75000
-Storage Engineer II Location :WINSTON SALEM, NC 27101
-Senior SAN Engineer Salary/Wage: USD 90,000.00 to USD 95,000.00 per year Plus Excellent benefit package
-Senior SAN Administrator Locat:Newyork Salary: 100,000.00 - 110,000.00 USD /year
-Storage Area Network Administrator: IMMEDIATE OPENING!! Location: Bluemont, VA
-Sr. Storage Administrator Location:Bothell, WA
-Lab Engineer - RAID, NAS, SAN, VLANs Location: Redmond, WA
-Storage Specialist N-Series :IBM Location :NC-Charlotte

So the jobs are increasing so are the expectations - I dont think any starter in IT industry can dream of above said jobs immediately but if they work hard consistently & keep themselves updated with the latest SAN technology they can win big.

See the trend : storage demands are increasing - required professionals availability is not - so companies are forced to hire new guys or to hire someone who know atleast good networking and system administration & then give them training. Even if we consider this still companies have to hire in big numbers to serve their growing customer demands. Hence many people who start their career with Storage or SAN in focus stand a chance to win a good job with a great pay.

All it takes is time , lots of effort & a mountain of patience. Find more information on Storage Area Network tutorials or SAN tutorials coming in this blog.

If You Like to See more such articles Plz add comments in this blog - also send a mail to roger.smithson@gmail.com - You will get a personalised training and A FREE - Jobs within a week - Secret blog access.

It Costs only $240 to get a Dedicated Guidance & To help you Build Your Career.

If you are planning to Get a Job in this Highest Paying IT industry
If you want to build a Strong base in Storage Technology
If you want to Build a Strong Resume which attract lots of Interviews
If you want to clear Interviews & Get Offer Letters with a High Salary in Storage

it Costs only $240 for you to get dedicated guidance from me. Email me ( roger.smithson@gmail.com ) and write to me how can I help you to get the best Job & a Better Career.

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VIDEO SECTION:
Thanks to 3DGameman.com see a NAS product Video review
(Network Attached Storage - a simple product for external storage Video)

How will be a day in a Storage professionals office life

Storage jobs or SAN jobs are there - Are you ready to win them !

Storage Resume or System Administration Resume

1.What is SAN ?
2.What are the JOB opportunities in SAN ?
3.Which are the companies in SAN and How much they pay ?
4.How Can I Enter SAN industry ?
5.What are the tasks of a SAN professional- How will be a day in his office life?
6.How will be a SAN job interview ?
7.SAN or Storage engineer position - Interview questions : Series1
8.Real SAN Interview questions with answers: Series2
9.Answers for SAN interview questions Series1.
10.Tell me about some Job Openings in SAN or Storage industry?
11.Do You Want to see an Enterprise SAN infrastructure - Thanks to Dell - Watch this informative Video - See a High End Lab

Regular day in a Storage Professionals Office Life

What are the daily tasks of a SAN professional - What are the routine jobs he is responsible for - What happens in a SAN industry engineers' day in office.

Answer :
As with any software professional's life the day starts with a brief review of going through the Mails - Since we are dependent on many other teams who are located in different time zones & geos we usually find nearly 50 to 150 new emails in our inbox when we start our day.

We go through all these mails - some of them are very much relevant to our day's tasks like "Storage Product enhancement or development efforts " , " New fixes which will impact our earlier planning" , Lots of organisation wide mails saying who will be our new director or finance manager , Lots of Network or system or UPS outage mails , Lots of mails about the CR's (Change request or Bugs) which we or one our teammate has logged and what are the latest updates regarding these bugs. The list of mails is endless so we better can have a separate posting for that.

Then based on our mails and our seniors(manager or lead) inputs and also based on our earlier days work we make our small "To Do " list for the day which is some how planned with keeping in mind the "Dreaded Project Deadlines" ( End dates for us to finish the assigned tasks).

An example of our To Do list can be something like :
1. Go through the docs about the new features coming in the next release or version of the storage area network product.
2. Setup a test environment to reproduce the CR's or bugs logged by customers. ( the end users of our storage products)
3. Verify the CR's fixed by dev team ( we logged 10 bugs last week they fixed it 2 days back & delivered the new fix in our latest build of the product yesterday so we need to verify it today ) - We need to verify the fix & say that the fix has resolved the issue also called the product defect or NOT. If the bug is fixed (resolved) we close the CR saying the FIX is FINE(works) else we say the FIX has failed ( the bug still exists & the development team has not fixed it properly)
4. Write new test scripts to check the regressions filed by customers - We also do test development ( We develop and script or code the test cases or test scenarios - this involves lot of learning , implementation & improving )
5. Setup new 2 Terrabyte disk array & test how well is it working with latest Vista or latest Suse or RHEL linux.

the list grows along the day & some of them move for next day's ToDo list.

Then we start the actuall work to accomplish what we have put in our ToDO list.
We may be working with new release of our SAN product and need to carry out sanity checks on the builds ,creating setups with different hardware and configurations and Operating Systems. We try to replicate customer network setups as far as possible but a customer like Citibank can have a huge SAN network costing billions of dollars what we can afford to replicate is no where comparable to that. We can say we setup a scaled down SAN network to work in our lab for all our work.

Storage jobs or SAN Jobs blog - Helps you get a Good Software Job

We will explain in detail each of the above mentioned tasks in our next week's blogpost. Please post comments or feedback . Ask as many questions about SAN or storage jobs.Find more information on Storage Area Network tutorials or SAN tutorials coming in this blog.

If You Like to See more such articles Plz add comments in this blog - also send a mail to roger.smithson@gmail.com - You will get a personalised training and A FREE - Jobs within a week - Secret blog access.

Can I get a job in SAN - I am new to Storage technology

SANs are primarily used in large scale, high performance enterprise storage operations. It would be unusual to find a Fibre Channel disk drive connected directly to a SAN. Instead, SANs are normally networks of large disk arrays. SAN equipment is relatively expensive, therefore, Fibre Channel host bus adapters are rare in desktop computers. The iSCSI SAN technology is expected to eventually produce cheap SANs, but it is unlikely that this technology will be used outside the enterprise data center environment. Desktop clients are expected to continue using NAS protocols such as CIFS and NFS. The exception to this may be remote replication sites. Remote replication enables the data center environment to exist in multiple locations for disaster recovery and business continuity purposes. The performance issues inherent in iSCSI are likely to limit its deployment to lower-tier applications, with Fibre Channel remaining incumbent for high performance systems.

VIDEO SECTION :
See Jonathan Schwartz,CEO - Sun Microsystems
You Can Win a SunFire X4500 Storage Server see this video

The 5 TOP questions any body wants to ask a SAN pro.

Storage jobs or SAN jobs have lot of tasks around setting and configuring SAN network and making them work smoothly with the latest OS or customer requirements.

Storage Resume or System Administration Resume

1.What is SAN ?
2.What are the JOB opportunities in SAN ?
3.Which are the companies in SAN and How much they pay ?
4.How Can I Enter SAN industry ?
5.What are the tasks of a SAN professional- How will be a day in his office life?
6.How will be a SAN job interview ?
7.SAN or Storage engineer position - Interview questions : Series1
8.Real SAN Interview questions with answers: Series2
9.Answers for SAN interview questions Series1.
10.Tell me about some Job Openings in SAN or Storage industry?
11.Do You Want to see an Enterprise SAN infrastructure - Thanks to Dell - Watch this informative Video - See a High End Lab