The Hands-On Lab Program at SNW continues to be a resounding success!
Look for another set of these popular education and training sessions at SNW (Storage Networking World) Fall 2012, October 16-19, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara CA.
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 can 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 2012, 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. Attend our kickoff call on Tuesday May 15 at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET. 1-866-439-4480 passcode 34319539#.
For more information on participating in the Fall 2012 Hands-On Labs, contact Marty Foltyn at marty@bitsprings.com
Here is just a sample of the attendee comments from our most recent HOL activities:
“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
For Fall 2012, the Hands-On Lab program will feature the return of popular technology labs and the introduction of new technology labs in topics like storage security and Big Data analytics. Lab descriptions below are from the 2011 program. Stay tuned for the final list of labs to be published in summer 2012.
Advanced Data Protection and Reduction
This lab focuses on exercises that illustrate how organizations store data - first for backup and disaster recovery, and now across the entire storage ecosystem, using technologies like data deduplication.
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.
Managing Big Data
New applications, such as genomic sequencing, HD video processing and social media, to name a few, together with standard applications such as email, document and CAD programs, have created a digital universe that is doubling every 18 months. Managing this “Big Data” is becoming extremely critical as organizations in a variety of industries look to provide effective solutions to collect, store, protect, and analyze a growing amount of these data assets. This lab guides participants through various approaches to meet the challenges of managing Big Data including developing an understanding of your data and creating policies using data profiling, effectively managing data using an intelligent data management platform that incorporates an active archive approach, accelerating and getting your backup/restore process under control, and ensuring your storage requirements are met for the long term. Upon completion, you will better understand the benefits these technologies can offer.
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.
Contact hol@snia.org for more information on our Hands-on-Lab program.
