SAN certifications GUIDE

SAN or Storage Area Network certifications benefit any storage professional who deploys and manages multi-site, multi-vendor SAN environments .

These are designed to introduce technologies like SAN products, topology, and terminology associated with storage networking. It introduces current concepts, terminology, and standards associated with networked storage: storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS), and internet (iSCSI). It explains what you probably already have installed in your enterprise so that documentation and information resources for your installation will make sense.

Skills and knowledge related to various networked forms of storage such as Storage Area Networks (SAN), and Network-Attached Storage (NAS) are gaining demand in today’s workplace, and that IT professionals interested in data centres or network backbone related positions are likely to need strong storage chops to do their jobs.

If you are looking for storage area network (SAN) certification to do troubleshooting and diagnostics, you would want to pursue a more hands-on and in-depth focused storage training and certification. On the other hand, knowing how to use a protocol analyzer makes for good conversation in some circles, but it may be too in-depth for other job functions.

There are many different options to pursue depending on where you want to go with your career, including vendor-specific and technology-neutral training from industry and private groups.

For example, if you want to leverage your experience with Brocade and EMC, then certifications from those vendors would be an option. If you are looking for more broad and generic certification and qualifications, then the various SNIA certification and qualification programs are made for you.

There are some vendor-neutral certifications available—particularly those from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)—while there are also numerous vendor-specific certifications available from vendors that offer storage systems and solutions, including Cisco, Brocade, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP, IBM, NetApp, Sun/Oracle, and many others.

The SNIA credentials provide an excellent entry point into the world of storage design, implementation, and management, while the vendor-specific programs tend to match up with what active IT professionals interact with in the work place for current employees (or what they’d like to interact with for future or prospective employers). And with CompTIA partnering with SNIA to introduce a Storage+ credential in 2012 (current candidates can get similar coverage and scope from the SNIA Storage Foundations class but without a separate exam and credential in the meantime) there’ll be a high-quality entry-point level storage certification to add to this mix soon.

Brocade Certified Network Engineer
Required courses:	None, though Brocade recommends its CNE 200 “Brocade Certified Network Engineer BLS” class
Number of exams	Single exam only: 150-120 Brocade Certified Network Engineer
Cost per exam	$150 USD in the USA, approx. 8500 INR in India

Exam topics for BCNE:

• Layer 1/Hardware Concepts
• Brocade Hardware Platforms
• Layer 2 Switching and Protocols
• General Layer 2/ Layer 3 Concepts
• Routing Concepts
• Access Control List (ACL) Concepts
• Quality of Service (QoS) Concepts
• Network Security, Management and Monitoring
• Troubleshooting

Each certification has a proctored test administered by Pearson VUE and to schedule an exam visit their Web site.