Developing the Next Generation of Storage Admins - Training the SysAdmins

basic operations screenshot from Hitachi Storage Navigator

As the responsibilities in the enterprise data center become more distributed among different teams, it becomes more and more difficult to coordinate strategic efforts.  One of the main culprits in this problem is the lack of awareness of what other teams in the enterprise actually do.

It starts with a "mainframe group" and an "open systems"  group.  On top of this, there are often database analysts and programmers on staff.  When the decision to implement SAN-attached storage is made, the first "storage admins" usually come from the SysAdmins and the mainframe folks. The storage team has a basic understanding of what the admins are doing, but time separates them. VMware evolves, operating systems upgrade, and things just aren't the same as when the storage guys left. The reverse path is even worse--we get good training for the storage team, but rarely do the SysAdmins learn just what it is the guys who work with the USPVs actually do.

There are two problems with this structure. First, lack of training breeds a lack of common "language." We see this all the time with DBAs who know Oracle but have no idea about the systems on which it runs. When storage guys provision their arrays and pass devices to the servers and all the Windows guy sees is "\\.\PhysicalDrive30" a huge disconnect develops. One can argue a number of reasons why storage training should be delivered to staff outside the storage admin team, including our desire to fill storage team vacancies from within the enterprise.

How can we get storage training to folks outside the storage team? This is tough even in the best of times, and when the economy is slumping, it's difficult to get budget for training even the essential personnel. Still, it's in the best interests of the storage admins to share.

Some approaches for spreading the knowledge around:

1. Send them to vendor-offered/sponsored training. Yes, this is the expensive option, but it doesn't get better. Give the sysadmins the same training the storage admins get.

2. Hold "informal" classroom sessions for the admin teams. When the storage guys get back from formal training, hold one or two "informal" conferences/sessions with the other teams. This will help to reinforce the classroom training as well as pass it along.

3. Conduct "watch and learn" training. You need to provision storage for a server? Invite the admin who works that server to participate. Does this require extra coordination? Communication? Cooperation? Yes. Are these bad things? Not in the least.

4. Create internal video presentations. Get a product like Camtasia for windows or set up open-source screen-recording on Linux and record storage team members doing some basic operations. Do a quick step-by-step voiceover on the files and share them on the company's intranet. They don't have to be more than what CNN would call "raw footage," but any examples and live-action illustration will help.

Remember, when selling these ideas to your boss, be sure to counter any resistance with your long-term subversive goals. The more the other teams understand what you do, the easier it will be to steer things to your team's advantage later.