NetApp ONTAP storage administration is the work of running the NetApp clusters that hold file shares, VMware datastores and database LUNs in banks, hospitals and big companies. When a share goes read-only, a LUN disappears from a server or the DR copy falls behind, the storage admin gets the call.
This course takes you from the very start to the work senior storage engineers do. You begin with how ONTAP is built: nodes and HA pairs, the cluster network, disks, RAID-DP and RAID-TEC, aggregates, SVMs, volumes and LIFs. Then you provision real storage: LUNs over iSCSI and FC with multipath on Linux and Windows, NFS exports for RHEL and Ubuntu, and SMB shares joined to Active Directory. After that come snapshots, FlexClone, SnapMirror to a DR cluster, vault backups, QoS, FabricPool tiering and monitoring.
Labs run on your own laptop. You use the SaatVedha ONTAP practice shell (a Python learning tool that looks like the ONTAP command line, with two clusters, client hosts and 20 faults you can switch on) plus Linux and Windows VMs in VirtualBox for the host side. Every task also shows the System Manager path, so you learn the GUI and the CLI together.
A whole phase is a troubleshooting blueprint: what to check, where to check it and how to fix it for the problems storage teams meet every week, such as LUNs not visible on a host, NFS stale file handles, slow volumes, full aggregates and broken SnapMirror. Every lesson has a “Break It, Then Fix It” lab.
What you need: a laptop with 8 GB of RAM, Python 3.8 or newer, and VirtualBox. Lesson 2 walks you through the setup.
Who This Course Is For
- Freshers who want a first job in storage or data centre operations
- Server, VMware and backup admins who now look after NetApp too
- SAN admins moving from other arrays (Dell, IBM, Pure, HPE) to ONTAP
- Working NetApp admins who want to fill gaps on SnapMirror, QoS and troubleshooting
- Anyone preparing for the NetApp Certified Data Administrator (NCDA) exam
What You Will Learn
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Explain ONTAP's scale-out design: nodes, HA pairs, aggregates, SVMs and LIFs
- Build aggregates with RAID-DP and RAID-TEC and keep the right spares
- Give LUNs to Linux and Windows hosts over iSCSI and FC with ALUA multipath
- Create NFS exports and SMB shares that work the first time
- Protect data with snapshots, FlexClone, SnapMirror and vault backups
- Control performance with QoS and tier cold data to S3 with FabricPool
- Troubleshoot step by step: what to check, where, and in what order
Why Learn NetApp ONTAP?
ONTAP is one of the most widely used enterprise storage platforms, on premises and in the cloud through Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. Storage engineers who can keep it healthy are needed in banks, telecoms, hospitals and service companies.
Admins who can find why a LUN vanished or why a volume is slow, without guessing, are always in demand. Those are the skills this course builds, one lab at a time.
- Get hired for storage admin, SAN/NAS and data centre roles
- Fix host access, capacity and performance problems by checking, not guessing
- Understand what a command does before you press Enter
- Build a base for cloud storage, backup and DR work
- Prepare for the NCDA exam
Course Meta Information
Further reading: NetApp ONTAP storage administration
Official documentation: ONTAP 9 documentation and the ONTAP command reference.
Daily commands in one place: the SaatVedha Command Builder. Related courses: SAN Storage, Brocade FC Switches and Linux Administration.