I have recently started working on a FlexPod environment. The environment relies on NetApp for all of its storage needs, but unfortunately I hadn’t worked with NetApp products before. Because of this I have been spending most of my spare time reading and labbing so that I could build my skills up as quickly as possible.

An issue I ran into, and what I plan to resolve with a series of posts, is the lack of structured information that is aimed at people who have not worked with NetApp products before. (I’m happy to be proven wrong so please feel free to comment on this post or e-mail me if you feel I am incorrect).

Don’t get me wrong, there is a limitless amount of well written NetApp documentation out there, as are there blogs, instructional videos, NetApp University, Technical Reports… the list goes on. However, as these resources aren’t really aimed at complete newcomers, the material doesn’t easily flow from topic to topic, so newcomers are left to piece bits and pieces of information together. Having said this, I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining because I have thoroughly enjoyed the learning process.

One other thing I would like to point out is that most of the notes I have collected during my studies (and therefore, most of the information in this series of posts) were gathered from numerous sources. I’m simply putting the information together in a structured manner. Because of this, I will include references to each of the sources so that the authors will get the recognition that they deserve. Further to this, in most cases I have only collected snippets from each source, so please also visit the reference links if you’d like to view an unedited/unsnipped version of the information.

Finally, once I have completed this series of posts, I will release them in PDF format along with a table of contents to enable easy searching and navigation.

Now that I have the intro out of the way, my next post will jump straight into it. I hope you enjoy it.

See the NetApp From the Ground Up - A Beginner’s Guide - Index post for links to all of the posts in this series.


As always, if you have any questions or have a topic that you would like me to discuss, please feel free to post a comment at the bottom of this blog entry, e-mail at will@oznetnerd.com, or drop me a message on Reddit (OzNetNerd).

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not those of my employer.

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