Has anyone taken the "NetApp 202: Advanced System Administration and Troubleshooting for Network Appliance Filers class. And if so, was it useful?
+-- Douglas Ritschel Douglas.Ritschel@fnc.fujitsu.com once said: | Has anyone taken the "NetApp 202: Advanced System Administration and | Troubleshooting for Network Appliance Filers class. And if so, was it | useful?
I took it with the 101 class as a package deal. It wasn't useless (in fact, I think it was fairly useful**), but it was expensive (I think both classes we're like $2500/person [4 days for both I think], but I might be remembering incorrectly).
If money isn't a big concern and you're not already a "power user" (i.e. you're regularly using stuff from the rc_toggle_basic command set and are familiar with NetApp internals), I'd recommend it. The 101 class I got very little out of except I learning some of the CIFS stuff which I hadn't previously done (we're a Unix shop).
A bonus to the classes is you may get to play with HW other than what you have. I also liked the fact that I could really get a chance to play with the HW as well. Since the HW we had was production I didn't really get a chance to play with it. :)
Oz
** Ex: I learned how to do a "floppy boot" w/o using an actual floppy which I've used several times since then. Very convienient when you, e.g. bung a password on a filer 3000mi away and need to reset it. I got info on a lot of little stuff like that, some performance optimization tips, etc., etc.
I took the 101 and 202 as a package deal as well. While I haven't taken the 202 class since it was revamped, I found them both to be highly useful (I suspect that it's even better now!). Just the books alone are worth the price of the class since they document many of the features and "hidden" commands most admins would never know about. That's also where I found out about this talk list and made some friends in the business who are local to me as well.
In short, If you're working with Filers on a regular basis, I highly recommend this class.
BTW, these classes are the same exact ones NetApp employees (from tech support to engineers) must attend. There were at least 4 employees in the same class I took.
If you have the opportunity, try to take it right in Sunnyvale. The area is beautiful and the training facilities are terrific. If you do decide to go, send me an email if you're looking for travel recommendation particulars.
Derek Kelly Gennomecorp
On 5/8/00 at 5:21 PM, Douglas.Ritschel@fnc.fujitsu.com (Douglas Ritschel) wrote:
Has anyone taken the "NetApp 202: Advanced System Administration and Troubleshooting for Network Appliance Filers class. And if so, was it useful?
-- Douglas Ritschel Fujitsu Network Communications Two Blue Hill Plaza, Sixth Floor P.O. Box 1609 Pearl River, NY 10965 Ph: 914.731.2101 Douglas.Ritschel@fnc.fujitsu.com
Has anyone taken the "NetApp 202: Advanced System Administration and Troubleshooting for Network Appliance Filers class. And if so, was it useful?
It wasn't mindblowing, but it gave me a good chance to do evil things to some F760s I couldn't dream of doing to production hardware :> It's always nice to have run through things like booting off the floppy image to revert to a previous snapshot before you -need- to do it at 3am.
It was certainly worth the day off of work, and if they've changed the content I'll probably attend it again. The instructor we had (hi Stefan!) was competent and personable, and at one point was on the phone to some other people at netapp to get an explanation of what some forgotten argument to a command was, which I thought was pretty cool (both in that he admitted he didn't know and was willing to go to the effort of finding out).
Running through some failure recovery scenarios was probably worth it by itself (and that was why I attended), but the performance monitoring stuff was also useful. About the only thing I would have wanted more on was backup strategies (which was only briefly touched on IIRC).
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Derek Kelly -
Douglas Ritschel -
Nick Manka -
Ozzie Sabina