Much closer to home this one, and familiar territory for me as i have done quite a lot of work over in Berlin, so the flight to Tegal will only be a short 1 hour and 45 mins, where as Vegas will be 10 hours 30 mins.
I mentioned in my previous post that i had booked 2 exam slots one for Vegas and one for Berlin, these were booked based on the requirements of certification level and i have not yet managed to find the time to complete the NCIE Clustered Ontap exam although narrowly failing last year at NetApp Insight – Dublin. I have booked in for the NCIE in Vegas and the NCDA in Berlin, hopefully i can change if i am not succesful over in Vegas.
Monday
Daniel Isaacs & Edward Shapiro
Learn the details about all-flash FAS (AFF) and why we are launching it now. This session covers supported configurations, components, and performance results for various workloads. Discover outstanding AFF performance with Data ONTAP 8.2.x and how the next major release of clustered Data ONTAP can improve performance even further. See how Data ONTAP manages SSDs, why Data ONTAP is good for flash, and how WAFL can improve their lifecycle.
PL-2-2460-TT – E-Series Sizing and Tuning
Michael Jastad & Alexander Sammer DNU
Discover how easy and effective E-Series sizing can be. In this session you will learn through guided walkthroughs about the resources, tools, and utilities available. We also cover how to best tune E-Series to meet your performance targets for the different workloads, as well as covering the new SANtricity performance-improved firmware. In this session you will also learn how to design your E-Series solution for best performance and highest availability to achieve six 9’s.
Tuesday
Pete Learmonth & Nick Howell
This session will discuss the new and updated features of the next major release of clustered Data ONTAP as they apply to vSphere environments. We will also go into new features, configuration practices and limits for vSphere as they apply to storage.
TR-3-2124-TT – Identifying Storage System Bottlenecks with Perfstat
Laurent Torossian
One of the most powerful tools available to the NetApp technical field is the Perfstat. With Perfstat, we are able to examine almost every single aspect of a NetApp controller’s performance behavior. But with all that information, it can be difficult to know where to start to identify a problem. In this presentation, we will use Perfstat to identify the cause of a controller’s poor performance and suggest solutions. Knowing how to use Perfstat effectively is vital for being able to troubleshoot and diagnose performance issues.
TR-2-2233-TT – Performance Analysis of NetApp Systems for Presales Sizing Considerations
Bobby Hyam
In this session we will discuss common approaches to gathering and analyzing performance sizing information on installed NetApp systems for purposes of determining suitable replacement systems. We will highlight common field tools and which tools have high value for an enterprise technology refresh in the area of performance modeling. (e.g., AutoSupport, SPM and CMPG etc.)
VI-2-2235 – NetApp Best Practices for vSphere Part 3a: Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins of VMware Storage Networking, Part 1
Pete Learmonth
Storage networking can be complicated. One of the problems is that there are at least three different types of administrator or architect involved – server/VMware, networking, and storage – often from different groups within IT. Being able to articulate the requirements and configuration details for all three parts and why they matter goes a long way to building the credibility to smooth the relationships and get the configuration you need so it all works. When explaining it helps to be able to enumerate the dependencies, how they apply to your environment, and how to satisfy them. This session goes through the concepts and decision criteria for points of configuration from ESXi and server network interfaces, through the switches to the storage systems. Configurations for reliability, high-availability, performance, and better utilization of your resources will be shown. We will explain why some sources of practices conflict, what changed and why, and under what circumstances the other practice might be correct.
VI-3-2236 – NetApp Best Practices for vSphere Part 3b: Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins of VMware Storage Networking, Part 2, Advanced
Pete Learmonth
In part 1, we covered the basics – enough to get most environments going. Now we want to go deeper and into more complex configurations. In this session we will look at the nuances of implementing distributed vSwitch load-based teaming and getting good usage of ports and even balancing traffic when using multiple storage protocols. There will be more fun with spanning tree and BPDU packet filtering, and how to avoid denial of service attacks from malicious or infected guests.
FL-2-1920-TT – Hybrid and All-Flash FAS Storage: Selling, Sizing and Deployment Guidelines
Daniel Isaacs & Edward Shapiro
This session covers the target workloads and uses cases for Flash Cache, Flash Pool and all-flash FAS storage, how to size cache and all-SSD aggregates and systems, and the best practices for deploying hybrid and all-flash storage on the same cluster. Many data center and service provider (cloud) clusters will have a need for Flash Cache, Flash Pool and all-SSD aggregates, so a clear understanding of the best fit workloads for each, and how best to configure them on the same cluster, is important.
Wednesday
Steve Botkin
In this session we will focus on the best approaches to verifying platform fit and interoperability (gathering information to determine if a system will meet the basic requirements and properly support given applications). We will discuss how to leverage Hardware Universe (HWU) and the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) for this purpose.
MG-2-3008 – Proactive Performance Management Using OnCommand Performance Manager and Insight
Joseph Weihs
OnCommand Performance Manager (OPM) is designed from the ground up to benefit clustered Data ONTAP customers. Learn how to leverage Performance Manager and OnCommand Insight (OCI) products for performance monitoring of cluster resources, automated troubleshooting, and leverage key performance indicators to proactively monitor and manage utilization and performance of storage clusters. Gain insight into our storage architecture and implementation details. Walk through specific examples and detailed scenarios for root-cause analysis and troubleshooting of storage problems. See how application teams are using OCI storage analytics and dashboards for capacity trending and forecasting of storage growth. Understand how OCI enables us to quickly make intelligent decisions and plan for storage workload rebalancing activities.
VI-2-2178 – Understanding and Designing the Software-Defined Data Center with NetApp and VMware
Jack McLeod – @McCloudonCloud
This session will dive into the software-defined data center (SDDC) and look at each of the components or five pillars that make up the SDDC and how NetApp fits into each of the following pillars: Management, Automation and Orchestration, Networking and Security, Compute, and Storage and Availability. Each SDDC pillar will be discussed along with detailed information on NetApp’s integration and participation in that pillar. By the end of the session, participants will know the pillars of the SDDC and have an understanding of the technologies involved for each pillar for both NetApp and VMware. The final portion of this session will give participants a roadmap for architecting their own SDDC.
TR-3-2320-TT – Synthetic Workload Generation and Measurement of Storage System Performance
Laurent Torossian
We will compare and contrast some common workload generation tools, highlighting pros and cons of each. We will present configurations commonly suggested by competitors and explain how to ensure we are not at a disadvantage, including how to suggest changes to the customer. Next, we will discuss one or two of the standard tools (e.g. Iometer) in depth. We will provide examples of tool use and configurations for simulations of common application scenarios such as database (SQL and Oracle), VDI, and home directories. We will be demonstrating examples of how to best showcase the strengths of particular NetApp system configurations, e.g., EF-Series and FAS systems including all-flash based configurations. We will show how to interpret the results and match them to performance measurements on both NetApp systems. Finally, we will discuss an example of how to present the results to the customer in a written format. We will finish with a recap of what we learned and provide a link to example configurations and a documentation template.
MG-2-2004 – An End-to-End Demonstration of OnCommand Insight
Donald Bourque & James Holden
Learn how OnCommand Insight is used to discover issues, determine causes, plan usage, check configurations, plan changes and deliver reports to management.
Thursday
Chris (C-Rod) Rodriguez
Learn how to configured a FlexPod for optimal performance in a VDI environment and learn clustered Data ONTAP, Cisco Nexus and UCS VDI configuration best practices. In this session, we will cover how to configure parameters for NetApp Storage Virtual Machines, Nexus switches and UCS servers for the different VDI products: VMware’s Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services running on vSphere, Hyper-V and XenServer. We will cover smaller FlexPod Express installations with under 500 seats up to larger FlexPod installations with over 10,000 seats. Configuration best practices running on NFS as well as iSCSI and FCP block storage layouts in a VDI environment will be covered. In addition, network VLAN switch layouts, LACP/VPC configuration and UCS QoS policies will be provided in this session as well. The focus of this session is to provide the knowledge to conduct successful VDI installations running on FlexPod, with small to large number of desktops.
DP-2-3026 – Data Protection Design Considerations
Mike Walters
Data grows and backup windows continue to shrink. In addition there is no “one size fits all” way to backup every application in an environment. This session will help you figure out how to start to conquer this complex problem. How do SLAs help make this easier? Does everything have to be consistent? Can Snapshot technology and replication help at all? What about replicating different data around the world, and so much more. Where does backup-to-disk come in? Should I use the cloud? This session will help you start to understand this challenge and help you make better decisions so it is easier to maintain.
CR-2-2105 – IPspaces, Network Best Practices, and Design Considerations
Michael Worthen
In this session we will be discussing Ethernet storage topics as they relate to the next major release of clustered Data ONTAP. An example of some of the topics are listed below: – IPspaces, Broadcast Domains, new functionality for outbound LIF traffic and how does all this now affect creating Storage Virtual Machines – Differences in Ethernet storage functionality between 8.2 and the next major release of clustered Data ONTAP – Ethernet storage considerations when upgrading/downgrading – Ethernet storage related best practices as they apply to the latest release of clustered Data ONTAP.