So I want to get some experience of Netapp

[MrComputerSaint]

So I want to expand my knowledge and I see a lot of job adverts (that I look at for IT engineers) look for SAN experience, I have some with Huawei, but not many companies use those.

A lot of them look for Netapp experience / qualifications.
I know they do their entry level qualification for free on their website, which I'm going to start doing.

But I wanted to get some hands-on experience and thinking this could be a good way...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1517265498...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Obviously I'd need a fibre switch (I've not found a netapp device with ISCSI controllers, yet)
With this link the Brocade 300 would be good
http://www.netapp.com/uk/products/pr...-switches.aspx

But they are rather expensive, just for something I want to gain experience of. £600 is a cheapest price really. Then I'd need to buy the SFP's and cables.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_fr...e+300&_sacat=0

Anyone know of a cheaper switch that could be used?

[Moby-Dick]

Why not start with one of the VSA's ?

http://up2v.nl/2012/09/06/data-ontap...e-to-download/

[Splash]

Why not start with one of the VSA's ?

http://up2v.nl/2012/09/06/data-ontap...e-to-download/

Is it necessarily worth putting much time into OnTap at this point? *cough*Solidfire*cough*

EDIT - also - the links on UP2V to Vaughn's blog are dead - you get a 404 when you follow them. Not sure if they're available anywhere these days, as while there are links on the NetApp community they all seem to link to either a featurelist with no download link or more 404s.

For me you'd be better spending some time with EMC's kit (again, they provide a bunch of virtual appliances for tinkering), though their product range can be confusing when getting started.

EDIT 2 - I love proving myself wrong - you can get to the simulator at http://mysupport.netapp.com/ by browsing into the Evaluations section once logged in.

[Moby-Dick]

Thanks for the updates

ONTAP is going to be around for a few years yet - while solidfire stuff is good , its got a few kinks to iron out.

That said, rather than going down any particular technology route initially I'd look at storage fundamentals first. The basics of how any storage system really functions ( controllers / cache / multipathing & fabric )

once you have that , then look at the various different types , and how the industry is adapting to take account of Hyper Converged stuff . most vendors will have a simulator or eval version ( in the case of software defined storage ) that you can have a play with and get to know some of the individual features of that system . its always good to know the limitations of the kit - for example max volume / files size. You might think thast basic but recently I came across someone who had to leave a customer with a lot of egg on their face as the expensive scale out NAS they had specified couldn't handle files over 4TB in size. Fine until you realise that we were trying to generate 25TB files....