Online SAN Training?
I was looking at some online SAN training just yesterday, which was from a major vendor in the market, and I gotta tell you – I was not impressed. I won’t mention the vendor by name, but if I was with this particular company, I would not be happy with the quality of the product that was being produced and released to the public.
Now let me give you the conditions of this training material that I looked at. First, it was a no-cost web-based presentation. I was not about to pay for something without knowing the quality of the content, so I wanted to try out some of their freely available material first. I would assume that any training organization would want to offer their best material at all times, but perhaps this particular company does not share that idea when it comes to their no-cost material.
The actual “content” was very technical, which all SAN training stuff seems to be, so the hardest part is usually getting the audience “involved” in the subject matter. The course is a 3 hour “narrated” system (voice over) of what looked like a few PowerPoint slide sets.
The Good Points:
- The presentation did work in my browser (Firefox). Some systems I have seen require you to load a proprietary piece of software just to look at the course, but this one played just fine without any of that.
- Navigation controls available. This system has arrows and buttons that you can click that allow you to jump around through the material, both forward and back, so that you could skip ahead or review something without having to play the whole presentation again.
- There was animation in some of the slides. Animation is good as it helps to illustrate certain concepts, such as signal flow or action-reaction concepts, much better than straight text.
- Review questions were present. These are good so that the student will know if they got the key concepts that were presented.
The Bad Points:
The biggest issue I have with this particular course overall is that it was BORING! I know teaching technical topics is a challenge (from my own experience), but watching and listening to this was really painful. Here’s why.
- Poor “acting” (voice over). I am very picky about how I present my classes, and I could tell that whoever did the voice over for this material was either just reading a script, or was “just doing a job” to get this material out. There was almost no “enthusiasm” at all. I could also tell that this person had limited (if any) knowledge of the actual subject matter. In one segment, the person actually was pronouncing the words wrong! The particular subject being presented is an area where you really need to be an expert, or at least someone that has worked with the systems that are being covered.
- Poor sound quality (production issue). One of the first things I learned when trying to make video, or web-based courses, is that the difference between a good or bad video is the sound. Think of a TV show or movie where the sound was either not clear, or the levels jumped around from high to low and back again. And what about those commercials that seem to blast out at you between scenes when watching TV?
I am very picky about the quality of training I provide. Even in a web or video-based environment, you have to make this material as good as you can to keep the student interested, or at least awake, through the process. I would hope that someone would review the overall product before it was released.
Even if this material is free, it needs to represent the organization at its best. After-all, this “give-away” course should be looked at as a sales tool, and if I was the customer, I don’t think I would be buying any more training based on this offering.
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Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Training
SCSI
SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface, and was based on SASI (Shugart Associates System Interface), which was developed and released back in the early 1980s. The use of the term “Small” is interesting, as that was the initial target audience for this system, but the protocol is now used in very large (enterprise class) storage systems around the world.
The original SCSI systems were based on a parallel set of wires (cable) that had separate control lines and data lines, and a few other conductors for termination power, Grounds (shields or “return lines” really) and of course data lines. The older SCSI systems would allow data transfers at a speed of up to 5 MB/s (Mega-Bytes per second).
Over time, speeds were increased, along with the number of bits that could be carried across the interface. What is now known as a “wide” SCSI bus carries two bytes of data at a top speed of up to 320 MB/s. There was talk in the technical committee that defined parameters to allow the interface to double its speed (up to 640 MB/s), but about that same time the serial interfaces for carrying data traffic (Fibre Channel mainly) were becoming more available for the same or lower cost and higher reliability.
The basic use of SCSI is to move “blocks” of data (vs. files) using a simple protocol. The protocol consists of an “Initiator” sending a command (such as Read or Write) to a “Target” device (disk, tape, etc.) and then transferring the data between these two entities, depending on the command itself. At the end of the command, a status is transmitted back to the Initiator to let it know if the command worked or not, from the Target’s point of view.
All of this makes up an “intelligent” system where these two entities have different roles to play, and the Target is expected to know where the data can be found, based on a Logical Block Address (LBA).
Most commands contain another parameter that tells the device “how much” data is going to be moving. For blocks, this is called “transfer length”.
SCSI is still around today, but mostly in the form of the Command-Data-Status protocol, and not so much as a parallel interface. Almost all data storage interfaces, including Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SAS, and even USB use this same protocol to move blocks of data between a computer and a storage device. That’s good news because virtually all operating systems know how to communicate using SCSI protocol, and that does not change when you move the command language to a different transport.
(vs. files)
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Solution Technology
Solution Technology is the main place I have worked for over the past 15+ years. It has been a great experience and I feel that I have met and worked with the “best of the best” in the SAN training industry, so I thought I should let you know a little about them.
They are actually a relatively small group of dedicated folks that have the talent to pass on technical information in a way that is easy to understand, at least if you have worked in the computer or storage industry at all. They pride themselves on developing technical documents (books & reference materials) and presenting very detailed information in a way that can be understood.
One of the best parts of most of the classes, at least in my opinion, are the protocol analyzer traces that show the actual operation of the interface. This does get into the nuts & bolts of how a system works, but for a person that needs this kind of detail, it is really great.
A few of the SAN courses (such as the iSCSI course) include hands-on lab exercises, where you can build, configure, and analyze how the system works. This involves installing either hardware or software (or both) components and then performing the actual steps to make it work. The best part of these classes, at least for me, is when something does not work and you have to use the tools you have available to figure out what is happening and make it function properly. Of course this means that you would have been given enough information about how the system is supposed to work, and how to use the tools, and these exercises help reinforce the concepts covered during the course by actually doing all these things yourself.
There is also a dedicated office staff at Solution Technology. They do their job so well that most of the time you are not even aware of them. This includes everything from scheduling the classes, both on-site and at the customer site, handling and shipping of materials (books and such), and handling “paperwork” (the backbone of most businesses), etc.
This may all sound relatively simple, but once you have seen how things can be “overlooked” or forgotten, as I have seen when other companies are trying to do these things, then you really start to appreciate the skills and talents of all involved there.
I am proud to have worked with everyone here.
Solution Technology - Ben Lomond, CA
Categories: SAN Companies Tags: Training