Edward Branley's blog

Recent report from a THI0517 student...Storage strategy3Enterprise Storage Hardware15Business Continuity15Storage Management Software9Storage Virtualization11Archiving, Backup, Restore2NAS2Performance2Maintenance1No questions were outside what we cover in class. Looking good!

A colleague showed me this app in Oslo week-before-last:

Course finder
for iPhone has
Arrived!

	Find course offerings worldwide
	Locate training centers by GPS
	Daily course releases
	Convenient access to the Learning Center

Neat! Just a couple of suggestions:

1. Make a Blackberry version! Given my bias towards Android, you'd think I'd be pushing that platform first, but we're talking about an app you want storage geeks to use. The majority of them (and that includes HDS' own GSS personnel) don't use either platform. They use Blackberry.

Know how you tell a techie who's a freelancer from a techie who's got a corp job in a pub in Silicon Valley? The corp guy has TWO smartphones, one of which is his company-issued Blackberry. Most of these folks can't be bothered carrying/charging/using two phones, so they've come to accept the Blackbery as their platform. Tablets are changing this dynamic, but slowly.

2. Use a QR code in app announcements. For example, this code should've been in the e-mail I received and the accompanying web page:

Why is this important? because the guy you want to download the app is reading the email on his Blackberry. Don't make him type the URL back in or do a search in iTunes Store-send him straight to your page.

That said, the app is pretty cool. Of course, if any of you have questions about which classes are right for you, feel free to drop me a line, I'll gladly offer suggestions.

Sent to me last week, here's a breakdown of the Modular Foundations exam (HH0-120):

I've received reports of questions relating to the old Thunder series. This concerns me, because we haven't really taught the 9500 series since 2006 or so. In old braindumps, I've found a couple of 9500-series questions:

A customer is using a 9585V storage array and is evaluating whether to upgrade to an AMS500
for performance reasons. Which statement is true?
A. The AMS500 supports larger drive sizes.
B. The AMS500 provides more back-end loops.
C. The AMS500 supports faster back-end loops.
D. The AMS500 supports faster Fibre Channel host connections.
Answer: D

For reference here, the AMS500 is the older version of the AMS2300 (16 trays, 120 drives max). The reason "D" is the answer because AMS500 supported 4GB fibre ports where the Thunders only supported 2GB.

A customer has a high performance application that creates a bottleneck at the front-end ports.
Which two arrays are supported Hitachi Data Systems configurations? (Choose two.)
A. AMS500 with four4Gb/s host ports
B. AMS500 with eight2Gb/s host ports
C. Thunder 9585V with four4Gb/s host ports
D. Thunder 9585V with eight2Gb/s host ports
Answer: A,D

B is wrong because AMS500 supports 1-2-4 gig ports. C is wrong because the Thunders topped out at 2 gig ports.

The customer needs a modular storage system which supports 200 Fibre Channel disk drives and
at least four back-end loops. Which two arrays support this configuration? (Choose two)
A. AMS200
B. AMS500
C. WMS100
D. Thunder 9585V
Answer: B,D

Rule out A and C because the AMS200 and WMS100 are 8-tray, 120-drive max arrays.

An IT organization has an application that stores its data on a Thunder 9585V After externalizing
volumes, they have decided to move the application data from one subsystem to another
subsystem in order to improve performance. However, they cannot disrupt usage of the
application. Which software tool should they use for the volume migration?
A. HiCommand Device Manager
B. HiCommand Protection Manager
C. HiCommand Tiered Storage Manager
D. HiCommand Business Continuity Manager
Answer: C

Now, this is a question that is legit. The developer could have just as easily put Compellant or Clariion there instead of 9585V. The focus is on which product is correct.

A customer has a high performance application that creates a bottleneck in disk access functions.
Which array has the largest amount of back-end bandwidth?
A. AMS500
B. AMS200
C. WMS100
D. Thunder 9585V
Answer: D

This question assumes you know that the 9585V was the top-of-the-line, 2-rack array of its day, like the current AMS2500.

My Google+ friend Dana Blouin shared this fantastic video on fiber. It's probably nothing you storage geeks don't already know, but next time you need to explain what we do, this can be part of that explanation:

UPDATE: I use Networkedblogs to echo this site over to Facebook, which means my non-techie friends see it as well. When one of them saw the title of the article, she replied back, simply, "Because 42 is the answer. :-)

Architecture diagram for Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (VSP/USPV)

Nigel Poulton offers some excellent speculation on why Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning uses a 42mb page size in HDP's Dyanmic Mapping Table. This graf is very curious:

Interestingly, you can also divide 42 by 2,3,4,6 and 7. These numbers equate to the number of data spindles in all basic supported RAID configurations (not including previously mentioned concats). To be honest, knowing a little about how clever, efficient and thorough the developers in Japan are I expect that the 42MB Page size maps to a lot more internally. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the number of screws used to build each internal disk chassis was divisible by 42….. ;-)

"clever, efficient, and thorough..." Yes, they are!

If you work with USPV/VSP, this is a very interesting read.

OK, my morning turned out nothing like I planned it to be, but that's another story. Flight changes put me home at 1030CST, and my test appointment at New Horizons was at 1100. I made it OK, so on to the details

Specific notes:

1. v2.0: No questions focused specifically on the v2.0 modular controllers. All questions could be answered for either v1.0 or v2.0.
2. Hitachi Dynamic Replicator: THREE QUESTIONS on HDR on my test! I owe you guys an apology when I said odds are there would only be one. Study up this module a bit more.
3. iSCSI: two questons about iSCSI config, and several others where iSCSI was one of the wrong answers. Be sure you're set on how it's configured.
4. "Classic" questions. Many of the usual suspects from early revs of the exam are still on it. The "classic Hi-Track question" wasn't there! The Section 9-Maintenance-question is fair, it's just not the one that's been there for years. Also, the "Classic Shadowimage question" has been changed-it asks about HDP environments rather than static provision pairs.

Please share your thoughts in comments!

The "Newton" classroom at Fast Lane Zurich

@HDSAcademy uses Fast Lane in Zurich as a training facility. I like this place, it's big, airy, and the people are great to work with.  Fast Lane Zurich is located in Zentrum Glatt, an office/shopping complex in the Zurich suburbs.

The front entrance. The facility is affiliated with both Fast Lane and New Horizons, so they're always busy with two or three classes.

There are ten classrooms in the facility, ranging in size from large (holds 10-12 student) to the six-student room you see on the right.  All the classrooms are well-lit and have solid workstations and support equipment.

The break/lunch room, with the all-important coffee maker! Unlike Fast Lane Vienna, smokers in Zurich have to step outside. I guess the Swiss are used to this, but it's awfully cold out there today.

Fast Lane Zurich is in the office building adjoined to the Zentrum Glatt shopping mall. Zentrum Glatt is the largest mall in Switzerland, a 3-story affair with numerous shops, a couple of department stores, a wide variety of eateries, and a Starbucks. It's also a bus terminal where a number of lines pass by/start/end. Beginning next week, the new #12 tram line for Zurich will pass by here, linking Zentrum Glatt with the airport by light rail.

Just got to a coffee shop after taking the Enterprise Foundations certification exam, HH0-110. 

I scored 56/60 for a 93% (65% is minimum passing score).

Here's the section breakdown:

Notes/thoughts:

• The Hi-Track question has changed! This question had been the same since 2005, now the answer is a bit different.
• Several other questions have been re-worded, but the concepts are still the same.
• NAS questions are all HNAS (BlueArc)
• More questions on Tuning Manager than I remember from the past. It's all from the HTnM module in THI0517, just more there than I expected to see.
• Several Replication Manager questions. Not sure if they count in section #3 or #4, though
• All questions are on "current" software products.
• No questions on "old" hardware--everything is about USPV/VM. AMS arrays (when mentioned) are 2000-series.

With respect to the latest braindump, the "current" questions are credible, but there's a lot of stuff in that thing that just didn't apply. Exercise caution.

Sorry for the delay on reporting on the exam--things have been more hectic than I anticipated!

I booked a 11am appointment at the local New Horizons tomorrow to take the enterprise exam. I'm going to follow my policy of not studying anything outside the THI0517 course materials, to validate that the class does hits the right material.

On the recently-acquired brain dump: This latest one is 167 questions. That's a bit high when compared to the ones I got my hands on in 2008-09. It has way too many old questions on it, specifically stuff about Lightning-USP (2005 vintage) migration. After i worked through ~40 questions I firmly believed should be thrown out, the dump started hitting current topics such as external storage and dynamic provisioning. It's hard to tell if the test-prep companies just appended the good stuff onto some old questions, or if that old stuff is really in the universe of questions.

I'll find out more tomorrow.

I first got my hands on the Virtual Storage Platform over the summer, and it was a fun experience to work with. So far, the best publicly-available discussion of the VSP is Nigel Poulton's deep dive, but here are five quick points that impressed me:

• SAS Back End - FC-AL is gone from the current versions of the HDS product line with the introduction of the VSP. Modular has been 3GB SAS since the release of the AMS2000s in Dec-2008, and now enterprise goes 6GB SAS. Like the modular, the VSP's back end will allow the user to install either SAS or SATA II drives where they please.
• 2048 Drives - Not quite double the USP/USPV (each at 1152), but a solid expansion. Since you can't "span" arrays yet, this gives the user more drives under one umbrella for now.
• Virtual Storage Director (VSD) - No more FED and BED processors, the VSP pools quad-core Intel processors in the middle, in a pool called the VSD. You've got two ports out of balance? the VSD can re-allocate processor power to the overloaded port, instead of a dedicated/pre-assigned processor on the less-active port sitting idle. Same for the back end. Again, this is similar to what the AMS2000s do on the modular level, but on the much-grander enterprise scale.
• Microde Upgrade Goodness - Because of the VSD's architecture, front end ports won't go off-line during microcode updates! Since no processors are directly tied to FEDs, there will always be processors alive to assign to ports. In the enterprise world, this could be as huge as the on-line upgrade capability of the AMS2000s was in the modular world.
• Storage Navigator 2 and HCS 7.0 - While the java stuff isn't completely gone yet, SN2 looks/functions more like Storage Navigator Modular 2, with its Device Manager-y look-and-feel. Additionally, SN2 has a task queue similar to the one in Hitachi Tiered Storage Manager, so you can set up a task, click "OK" to fire it off, and it goes into the task queue, returning control of SN2 back to you. No more "spinning i" or the "sunrise/sunset" of the old Lightnings. No more queueing up a zillion things and walking away for awhile. In addition to the task queue, SN2 also has a CLI, making repetitive tasks all the easier to implement.

Again, these are first-impressions and thoughts. I'll go deeper in upcoming posts.