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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

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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

Emails from People who read this blog

I wanted to share some of the nice emails I recieve.Some special emails.

Most dedicated student I have ever come across
"Hi Roger,

My goal is to get into the storage field, hopefully start at a company that uses Brocade and Netapp,EMC equipment.

To that end, this is what I have done and currently doing

I started by reading Storage Area Networks for Dummies and I am now reading “Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures” by Greg Schulz.

I just completed the Brocade CFP 264 4 Gbit/sec Accelerated BCFP Integrated Learning instructor led training in Atlanta. This was done on my vacation time ( I live and work in Illinois) and the class and travel was at my expense - $3000

I have completed the Brocade FC101 Fibre Channel Fundamentals

I have completed the Brocade TUT 100 Introduction to 4 Gbit/sec Tutorial

I am just starting the SNIA Storage Network Foundations Workshop 20 hour course with plans to take the certification test for SNIA Certified Professional – SCP this month.

I will also be studying for the Brocade BCFP certification but would rather wait to take the test when I have a few months of actual work experience under my belt.

To help study for the BCFP I am setting up a home SAN. I already have one Brocade Silkworm 2800 1Gbit switch, and the second is on the way. I also just purchased the first HBA and it is on the way.

My ultimate goal for studying is to create a home SAN with 2 Brocade switches, one EMC Clariion storage unit (old one from eBay) and 2 servers, one Windows Server 2003 running multiple virtual computer off the SAN, and the other server a Linux server also running virtual computers off the SAN.

I have downloaded a 60 day version of Fabric Manager and will be taking the Brocade FM 100 Monitoring, Managing & Maintaining Brocade Switches with Fabric Manager course.

There are several other Brocade courses I will be taking as well.
While in school one of the jobs I worked was for the College of Commerce and Business Administration network support. One of 5 students and a full-time supervisior we maintained 250+ computers/users.

Another of the jobs I worked at while in school was as computer lab assistant for 2 years. I assisted students in a variety of projects from basic to advanced."

I feel the above person is par excellence - He is always a winner because of his passion & dedication.


Another email I want to share.

"Hi Roger,

Thanks for the Docs you sent as attachment,

I am working as a Unix administrator, and looking for a better career in SAN and Storage Technologies. So When I was browsing for the stuff on the net I found your website. Its really good to see persons like you helping the freshers to Storage. Thanks for that.
I need some things like . where to start? how to start ?in SAN and storage.
How much practical experience we need before getting in to the real project?
Where can I take the classrom sessions ?( If required)

These are the few things which i am looking at now. I will be really glad if you can help me in this regard

Thanks for yourtime.
Suzanne "

My first day as a Software Engineer in Netapp

I joined Netapp as a Software Engineer today (This is sent by one of my blog reader I thought it is interesting enough to share with you all).

I want to share with you all my experiences on the first day of joining one of the best Storage companies. It is a great company and this is a great day for me. Not just because I got a job & a good pay.But I was able to over come a huge personal battle.

I will write here my experience of how after lots of blockades I was able to get a job and how was my first day in this world class company.

Is Storage one among the Highly Paid Jobs technology sector

Many blogreaders emailed asking is this one among highly paid jobs segment.
Answer is Yes - this is ONE among a few of IT segments where the salary is really good. Read below that its not just me who is saying that Pay packages in storage are really good but there are lots of online resources which reassure this statement.

I read this on one of the forums dslreports.com, shared by another SAN pro:
"Deep expertise in EMC, Veritas, HDS, McData, Brocade, etc. is certainly hard to find and well-compensated when it is found. I expect a lot of companies looking for SAN experts are dealing with staff that's been lured away by more money.

I just did my first EMC SAN install about 6 months ago and it's a daunting knowledge base to get into. Since a Dell SAN tech. actually handled the real install and configuration and hand-held me through some of the configuration I really only scratched the surface. He zipped through it like it was completely second nature to him, but he's done hundreds of installs of course.

If you have the opportunity to learn SAN I would absolutely take advantage of it. It appears to me that the demand for storage is insatiable and the more skill one has in managing storage networks the better your future will look. If you don't have the opportunity to learn SAN where you are now you may look at signing up for SAN training courses which, while they will not be cheap, will give a foundation to potentially get a foothold in an environment that needs SAN expertise.-boethius"

Another forum writer with nick cdru said :
"I would encourage you to find a job where you do what you love to do, not necessarily the one where you get paid the highest amount. Remember that jobs like this where people get paid alot, there is usually a reason. Either they are highly skilled at what they do or there is no one that knows what they know. Either way it's not something that you can quickly sit down and read a "Dummies Guide to SANs" and pick up in a afternoon. If it was, there would be a whole lot more people doing it and the salary price would be driven down."

According to another Storage related webportal TechTarget's annual Salary Survey, two new entrants into the top 10 list of titles are storage-related. Storage architect which has leapt from nowhere to score the number three spot, behind only CIOs and Internet architects, reports an average salary of $83,368, and average total compensation of $88,763. The position of storage manager has also appeared on the list for the first time. Coming in at number 8, the job has an average salary of $74,400, with average total compensation coming in at $76,300.

The rising importance of storage-related jobs makes sense, as companies continue to realize the importance of maintaining a solid and reliable infrastructure, and are investing accordingly.

So readers you can realise the importance of a Career in Storage & get going.

How will be a Company's Network Infrastructure

Continuing the trend of images find below some more real Company implementations of Storage,Network & Systems.

Two OBF servers sit on top of an SGI Altix

Digi Console Servers for remote configuration


Sunfire V20Z - AMD Opteron Based Servers from Sunmicrosystems

The servers site in a private 6ft x 8ft colocation cage. The datacenter itslf belongs to bostondatacenters.com -- an excellent facility

These 2 servers belong to the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, they host projects and sites such as bioperl.org, biojava,org, biodas.org, biomoby.org, biopython.org, bioruby.org, EMBOSS FTP

Rackable storage server (18x 250Gb SATA drives!) on top of an engineering prototype Intel system


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