The Hands-On Lab Program at SNW continues to be a resounding success! Exciting labs in Architecting a SAN, Data Protection, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Storage Virtualization, and Virtual SAN were featured at SNW Spring in Orlando FL.
Look for the next event of these popular education and training sessions at SNW (Storage Networking World) Fall 2013, October 15-17, 2013, at theLong Beach CA Convention Center. Learn about the conference here.
The SNW Hands-On Labs deliver a unique experience designed to introduce exciting technologies and raise knowledge levels. IT Professional participants go “hands-on” with real- world exercises. Vendor participants deliver one-on-one education and training in a collaborative setting.
IT Professionals - Participation in the Hands-on-Lab sessions is complimentary to all approved IT End-User registrants of SNW. For more information on registering for SNW Fall 2013, please visit http://www.SNWUSA.com.
Vendor participants - Particpation in the Hands-On lab is open to interested vendors in the topics listed below - or other topics you suggest!
For more information on participating in the Fall 2013 Hands-On Labs, contact Marty Foltyn at marty@bitsprings.com for your SNW Hands-On Lab Participation Guide
Here is just a sample of the attendee comments from our recent HOL activities:
"It gave me the opportunity to get practice on storage virtualization without having to have a demo or testing phase at work," IT Manager, technology company in the Storage Virtualization lab
“Just having access to the equipment and being able to play / learn on it with a expert close by is fantastic,” SAN Engineer, manufacturing company in the Unified Storage-IP Solutions Lab
“I loved the fact that the instructors spent one on one time with me,” Storage Architect, retail company in the Solid State in the Enterprise Lab
“I found it useful to get hands-on with systems I don't usually see,” Senior Designer, international manufacturing company in the Advanced Data Protection and Reduction Lab
“Gained an overall understanding of the process as we are planning on moving in this direction,” Network Administrator, state government, in the Storage Implications for Server Virtualization Lab
"My favorite part was the inside information on virtual SAN." Systems Engineer, telecommunications company, in the Virtual SAN Lab
For Fall 2013, we expect the Hands-On Lab program will feature the return of popular technology labs and the expansion of new technology labs in topics like storage security and Big Data analytics. Lab descriptions below are from previous programs. Stay tuned for the final list of labs to be published in July 2013.
Architecting and Implementing a Fibre Channel SAN
Instructor guided training designed for beginners and managers new to Fibre Channel in architecting a storage area network. Students are introduced to the theory of building a SAN with topics like zoning and worldwide naming, and then build a SAN using different vendor tools and applications..
Cloud Data Management
Instructor-guided training in the aspects of the new Cloud Storage standard called CDMI (cloud Data Management Interface), and its application to real-world solutions. Students will learn about data services that add value to stored data, and allow data movement from cloud vendor to cloud vendor withough the pain of recoding to different locations.
Cloud Storage
As IT environments become more complex, data levels grow, and costs increase, many organizations are examining the applicability of cloud storage solutions. This Lab guides participants through exercises that illustrate actual services provided "in the cloud" from service providers, including backup and restore, creating a petabytescale storage system with redundancy, use of a fully managed disaster recovery service, and online file storage.
Data Protection, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery - New Technologies
This Lab introduces participants to innovative ways to modernize data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery. Participants will explore solutions for compliance, encryption, and how to apply tools, technologies services, and techniques to reduce cost and risk while increasing service levels. Participants will also learn how advanced data resiliency and data deduplication techniques can be combined to provide flexible data protection and management for long term data. operations. Participants will also create a trust network, encrypt virtual storage volumes, and control access to protected shares.
Moving, Managing, and Analyzing Big Data
Effective harnessing of Big Data requires fast, efficient transport from where it resides to where it is needed, and an easy, dependable platform to store and analyze it. Participants will explore two complementary technologies: one that enables high-speed big data transport on a global scale; and one that provides enterprise grade capabilities to leverage that data using Hadoop. Upon completion, you will gain an understanding of the benefits of these technologies and how to integrate them into your business IT systems
Proven Methods to Change Your Cost Model for Big Data Storage
This Lab demonstrates different ways to overcome the storage challenges associated with breaking down “organizational silos” and building a cost-effective intelligent storage management strategy for big data and long-term data. Participants will use the latest technologies such as active archive, data deduplication, and compression to store and retrieve data efficiently. In addition, participants will learn methods to create a storage platform that can work at an enterprise level for big data and long -term data. Upon completion, you will better understand how the solutions can be utilized for storing data which can be referenced later for comprehensive analytics and efficient centralized management.
Solid State Storage in the Enterprise
Discover where and how solid state storage (SSS) can be applied and what the benefits can be in this Hands-On Lab. Exercises guide participants through applications of SSS within storage arrays and at the host level to understand characteristics, including performance. Participants will also employ the SNIA SSSI TCO Calculator for Enterprise SSS to observe the hard disk drive/solid state drive total cost of ownership.
Storage Implications for Server Virtualization
The operational and economical benefits of server virtualization have been clearly justified, but this virtualization consolidation highlights an increased and concentrated demand on storage resources. Server virtualization provides businesses with flexibility, but this flexibility can introduce challenges around management of both the virtual servers as well as the storage devices. Storage capacity and performance are primary concerns, along with operational and administrative overhead. This Lab guides participants through exercises that illustrate SAN and NAS and storage implications in establishing, maintaining, and optimizing a virtualized and physical environment. Upon completion, you will better understand how to use infrastructure-related cost reduction solutions and leverage technologies that enable reduction in administrative overhead for large-scale virtualization environments. You will understand how you can go from reactively managing your storage and virtualization infrastructure to proactively detect problems before they result in outages and user complaints.
Storage Virtualization
With ever more focus on ROI and TCO, there is heightened interest in storage virtualization. This Lab guides participants through the steps required to establish a virtualized storage environment. Upon completion, they have a good basic understanding of how to set up and configure a virtualized block storage environment with fault-tolerant protection. Participants will learn about basic provisioning, data migration, volume expansion, and data protection. They will also understand how to set up and take advantage of advanced virtualization features in a storage environment, including dynamic expansion and allocation of resources, replication, data migration, and data protection.
Unified Storage - Infrastructure
Migrating from a traditional SAN / LAN infrastructure to a converged datacenter is increasingly a topic of consideration for data center decision makers. This Instructor-Guided Lab provides a grounds-up approach to breaking the barriers for the converged datacenter of the future. Exercise topics include consolidating cabling, converging I/O communications, simplifying I/O and LAN communication management, and reducing data center sprawl.
Unified Storage - IP Solutions
In organizations of all sizes, Internet (IP) Storage Area Networks (SANs) are increasingly becoming the storage solution for business critical IT environments. In addition, the value of traffic convergence is quickening an investment in Unified Fabrics, an area in which IP SANs are relevant. This Lab discusses Unified Fabrics concepts and how they relate to the Unified Storage - Infrastructure Lab. Participants are guided through the steps required to setup and configure an IP based SAN.
Utilizing Tape As NAS and File Archive Storage Including Best Uses for LTFS
With the fast pace of data growth and the need to store data for longer periods of time, tape plays a major role in the modern data center. New technologies, features, and innovations like Linear Tape File Storage (LTFS) make tape easier to use and broaden its applications. This Lab provides real-world exercises on how tape is used in data center operations. Participants will explore how tape is deployed for file storage, archive, data protection, and more. Upon completion, participants will have a better knowledge of how to incorporate and utilize tape in their data storage and protection activities
Virtual SAN
This instructor guided lab provides IT professionals hands-on iSCSISAN experience by using a virtual infrastructure. Attendees review configurations for providing a virtual solution in a box, work in pairs to explore the virtual SAN infrastructure, and perform end-to-end SAN configuration to create and utilize a LUN and improve its performance with caching. Basic troubleshooting as well as advanced SAN functionality such as thin-provisioning and storage hardware accelerated features are included in this journey to enhance the participant's understanding of the SAN interactions and features. An embedded server side caching infrastructure is available in the lab and students will incorporate the SSD caching solution to improve SAN I/O performance.
Contact hol@snia.org for more information on our Hands-on-Lab program.
