📚 Course Curriculum Overview

Repeated live trainings will be provided for 5 years.

This program is designed to help learners from non-storage backgrounds transition into the storage domain with confidence.

🕒 Class Schedule

• Time: 8-9:30 AM IST(Fri Sat Sun) for 3 months

• Trainer: DG (WhatsApp: +91 9647524712)

• L2 Duration: 25 hours

• L3 Duration: 40 hours

• L3 = L2 + L3 (Troubleshooting-oriented training)

🔰 Storage Basics

• SAN and NAS architecture

• Front-end ports, back-end ports, and cache (read hit, write hit, etc.)

• Disk types and RPM

• RAID concepts

• Performance metrics: IOPS, throughput, latency

• Multipathing (MPIO): Ensuring the server stays connected if a cable or switch fails.

• Fabric Login process

• Zoning setup in Brocade SAN switches

• SAN switch troubleshooting: port errors, slow drain devices

• Ports on demand licensing, True-FOS licensing

• SAN switch upgrade

• Disaster Recovery Basics: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Replication.

📘 L2 Syllabus – NetApp Foundation

After covering storage and SAN switch basics, we begin with NetApp storage:

1. Architecture of FAS and AFF arrays; Disk Shelf cabling, numbering, disk ownership

2. NetApp licensing and three shells

3. ADP; aggregate creation and expansion

4. Networking concepts: LIF, VLAN, Ifgrp, Ipspace, BD, Routes etc

5. CIFS and NFS share creation and troubleshooting

6. Qtree creation, quota increase, volume expansion, auto-grow

7. ISCSI and FC LUN allocation and troubleshooting

8. Storage health check using AIQUM and On Command System Manager

9. Local snapshot configuration, restore deleted data, troubleshooting

10. Auto Support setup, SSL/HTTPS certificate installation

11. ONTAP upgrade and rollback with AIQ prechecks and troubleshooting

12. Non-disruptive operations: storage failover, vol move, vserver migration, LIF migration

13. Concepts: Epsilon, Quorum

14. Snap Mirror replication, vault setup, DR testing for NAS & SAN

15. System configuration backup setup, scheduling weekly backups, FTP transfer

🧠 L3 Syllabus – Troubleshooting & Advanced Topics

16. Storage migration using SVM-DR and troubleshooting

17. MetroCluster IP configuration

18. Snap Mirror active sync for critical workloads

19. ONTAP Deploy upgrade and related issues (ONTAP SELECT)

20. Troubleshooting space issues and object-not-found errors during code upload

21. Creating ONTAP Select cluster and troubleshooting

22. AIQUM installation, alert setup, ServiceNow integration

23. ONTAP installation session

24. Troubleshooting device discovery in AIQUM

25. 7-Mode to C-Mode migration using 7MTT tool

26. ONTAP FlexGroup volume setup

27. BlueXP connector installation

28. Disaster recovery using BlueXP

29. Cloud Volumes ONTAP deployment for CVO of AWS, Azure and GCP

30. Deploying a single-node Cloud Volumes ONTAP instance and HA pair with NFS & SMB.

31. StorageGRID management, replication setup, troubleshooting

32. Azure NetApp Files (ANF) deployment and management

33. SAN/NAS performance analysis using AIQUM and CLI

34. Cloud Insight/DII tool usage

35. BlueXP tiering

36. Cloud backup

37. Encryption

38. FabricPool configuration

39. Real-time troubleshooting: NFS mount, Plex, SnapMirror, NTLM, ONTAP Deploy, Hypervisor integration, failover, CRC errors, QSFP replacement

40. Google Cloud Storage for NetApp configuration

41. Ransomware protection and recovery

42. Multiprotocol NAS setup

43. Data protection using Snap Center

44. Additional sessions: FlexCache, FlexClone, MFA, FPolicy,ONTAP S3, E-Series, ASA arrays (initial config and BAU tasks)

45. Use the troubleshooting methodology for NAS and SAN protocols to define and isolate issues.

46. WAFL performance monitoring and analysis

47. Cluster interconnect performance

48. Interview preparation and one-on-one mock interviews

49. NCDA certification preparation

50. Modern Management Tools (BlueXP & NetApp Console): Integration of unified control plane management

51. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and Azure NetApp Files (ANF).

52. FabricPool advanced configurations—specifically tiering to object storage (AWS S3, Azure Blob) for cost optimization.

53. Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP): How to enable and monitor the built-in machine learning that detects unusual file patterns.

54. SnapLock for Compliance: Implementing WORM (Write Once, Read Many) storage to protect backups from being deleted or modified by attackers.

55. Multi-Admin Verification (MAV): Setting up "four-eyes" protection so that critical commands (like deleting a volume) require approval from a second administrator.

56. Digital Advisor (Active IQ): How to use predictive analytics to identify hardware failures or configuration risks before they happen.

57. S3 Protocol on ONTAP: Managing ONTAP as an object storage target

58. QoS (Quality of Service) Policies: How to prevent "noisy neighbors" from slowing down critical databases.

59. Troubleshooting scenarios

📝 Notes

• Each batch includes new troubleshooting sessions.

🆕 Additional Topics

• NFS trunking configuration

• Storage decommission process

• Advanced brocade san switch concepts(ISL setup, NPIV,LSAN,switch backup etc)

• LIF placement, migrate, failover & asymmetric routing

• Clustered ONTAP Deep Architecture

  • Cluster vs node‑scoped resources

  • Control plane vs data plane

  • HA pairs, takeover, giveback internals

  • Cluster quorum & RDB concepts (high level)

• WAFL Filesystem Internals

  • WAFL write path

  • Consistency Points (CP)

  • NVLOG & NVRAM behavior

  • Read/write amplification

  • Metadata vs data operation

• Network Design for Performance

  • LACP vs NFS trunking

  • VLAN vs physical separation

  • MTU & jumbo frames

  • Backend vs frontend networks

• P1 / P2 Incident Scenarios

  • Sudden latency spike

  • SnapMirror lag during DR test

  • NFS client freeze

  • Partial node/network failure

• Interview Focus Areas

  • Design justifications

  • Failure domain thinking

  • “What would you check first and why?”

NetApp Storage Training