[Gllug] Linux SANs

[Geoff Wright]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 6:47 PM, JLMS<jjllmmss at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I was intending to learn some SAN (EMC) skills, but their website is
> so hopelessly disorganized that I was losing the will to live.
>
> I got the impression that they will not ptovide you the training
> unless you are sponsored by an employer who is already using the
> technology.
>
> But of course all the jobs available out there require that you bring
> this knowledge to the table. Employers are  really shooting themselves
> in the foot with this one, the techies that could do this kind of work
> comfortably are out there, but most will not have the particular skill
> already...

Any unix admin with a bit of experience will be fine with any SAN
hardware. The general ability and problem solving skills of a unix
admin should see you through, it's just getting a foot in the door
that is the problem.

The strange thing is that many companies will task their windows team
to handle SAN administration. This works great when the GUI can
provide all the answers after a consultancy has installed and set up
the SAN. However when anything goes wrong the inability of the
majority of windows admins to understand how things actually work
comes back to bite them and so the consultant gets called back in,
cost++.

Employers, in relation to storage, really do shoot themselves in the
foot and will hold out for someone with a very narrow range of skills
backed up with a vendor qualification, usually at an inflated salary.
I would consider a strong SAN admin to have a pretty in depth
knowledge of the FC protocol, FC networks and troubleshooting. Many
employers would consider the ability to hand over pots of cash to EMC
for a vendor cert to be more important.
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