NetApp cDOT NCDA

I was out at NetApp Insight this week and took the opportunity to sit for the NCDA cDOT exam (NS0-156). I had taken the 5 day administration course about 2months ago, as well as reviewed almost 50 additional hours of content on learningcenter.netapp.com. After surviving the experience here is my feedback:

The cDOT Administration class itself is not enough to pass the exam
Make sure to do the extra labs found on the NetApp learning center if you want to pass
Make sure you completely understand the changes between 8.1 and 8.2 cDOT
Know Snapmirror, SnapVault, and QoS like the back of your hand!
Know NAS protocols and the proper order of operations/process to implement them
Most importantly, read the admin guide for cDOT 8.2!!!

I was lucky enough to meet and talk with some of the education team who gave me information into the thought process on how both the NCDA and NCIE exams were created, how and why they were recently updated, and some of the plans moving forward. Unfortunately because of the NDA I can't share this information, but I can say that they heavily recommended reading the Admin guide(s) and doing the labs in order to pass.

In all, I finished a number of exams out at the partner conference and I am now returning efforts back towards the CCIE: SP studies.

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Comments

nel

Hey man,

Congrats on the NCDA pass. I am looking to take the cDOT exam for some foundation storage knowledge as we deploy flexpod solution at work. I have the 5 day admin course booked for april. The 5 day course cost was $0 for netapp partners so i thought it would be a sweet thing to go on for free.

What was the quality of the cDOT admin course like? would you recommend it for users completely new to netapp?

When you say read the admin guide, which admin guide are you referring too? There are quite a few guides when looking at the documentation section - Product Documentation - Products By Type Doc Web

Cheers

kalebksp

nel, I've taken the class and and passed the cDOT NCDA as well. It is not a great place to start with NetApp in my opinion. Do the Fundamentals pre-req first otherwise you'll be lost. I'd recommend downloading the simulator and playing around with it. It looks like you're pretty knowledgable on the networking side, so that should help some. cDOT has a ton of networking pieces.

Hopefully you're doing one of the classes with an actual NetApp employee as an instructor, the third party ones that I've been to are terrible.

If you haven't already I would take a look through the FlexPod CVD too. I've designed and implemented a few FlexPod and personally I don't think anyone should take that guide and deploy it verbatim, it's more of a baseline, but it's a good way to see how the pieces fit together.

nel

kalebksp wrote: »

nel, I've taken the class and and passed the cDOT NCDA as well. It is not a great place to start with NetApp in my opinion. Do the Fundamentals pre-req first otherwise you'll be lost. I'd recommend downloading the simulator and playing around with it. It looks like you're pretty knowledgable on the networking side, so that should help some. cDOT has a ton of networking pieces.

Hopefully you're doing one of the classes with an actual NetApp employee as an instructor, the third party ones that I've been to are terrible.

If you haven't already I would take a look through the FlexPod CVD too. I've designed and implemented a few FlexPod and personally I don't think anyone should take that guide and deploy it verbatim, it's more of a baseline, but it's a good way to see how the pieces fit together.

Hey,

I have started going through the fundamentals and WBT online that netapp recommends. I am going to go slowly with this and build up to the course as i have other commitments. I also have access to the simulator through our partner login.

Is it a problem with the course itself when you say its not a great place to start? i.e. it doesnt cover the cdot fundamentals? or would you recommend starting with the traditional 7-mode ONTAP to get the basics and then move onto cdot?

kalebksp

The NCDA classes aren't intended to teach the fundamentals (what's an aggregate, raid group, igroup, etc). I've seen a lot of people take that class (7 or cDOT) as their first exposure and it ends up being over their head. You'll probably be fine if you put in some time beforehand.

Ideally you'd learn 7-mode first, but it's not absolutely necessary. Many of the 7-mode concepts are still there. In my class we skipped over a lot of that stuff, but that may have been a call by the instructor because we were all PS and SE who had been working with NetApp for years.

nel

Thanks for the heads up mate. I should have enough time to cover the fundamental courses by then

. Hopefully the course will help towards gaining some decent storage exposure.

Is there any design books/documentation you would recommend reading?

kalebksp

Since you're a partner I would recommend logging into the Field Portal and searching for "subsystem", those are great documents for real world info. Also take a look at the other documents that are listed in the "Clustered ONTAP Basics & Architecture" section of this page: https://fieldportal.netapp.com/clustered-data-ontap-knowledge-map.aspx

Another helpful partner resource is Lab on Demand: https://labondemand.netapp.com/

There are also curricula in Learning Center for partner PS and SE accreditation on cDOT.

nel

kalebksp wrote: »

Since you're a partner I would recommend logging into the Field Portal and searching for "subsystem", those are great documents for real world info. Also take a look at the other documents that are listed in the "Clustered ONTAP Basics & Architecture" section of this page: https://fieldportal.netapp.com/clustered-data-ontap-knowledge-map.aspx

Another helpful partner resource is Lab on Demand: https://labondemand.netapp.com/

There are also curricula in Learning Center for partner PS and SE accreditation on cDOT.

Mate, thats awesome. Thanks for the tips, much appreciated!