Course objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Review HPE Nimble Storage topics
• Discuss and understand disaster terminology
• Describe, configure and perform replication between groups for both planned and unplanned disaster recovery scenarios
• Discuss peer persistence
• Discuss and perform advanced administration features, including volume performance settings, SNMP, deduplication, encryption, and more
• Configure and manage multi-member groups, storage pools and discuss scale-up and scale-out guidelines and requirements
• Configure and perform volume moves between pools, and volume striping in a multi-member pool
• Discuss network considerations, networking best practices and scenarios for HPE Nimble Storage
• Describe integrations with Windows, Linux, VMware and Veeam

Prerequisites

Prior to attending this course, students should complete one of the following courses:

• HJ7C5S: HPE Nimble I: Management and Local Replication
• H6LH8S: HPE Nimble Storage Introduction and Administration
• H9TH5S: HPE Nimble Storage Introduction and Administration (with extended lab time)
• H9TH6AAE: Introduction to HPE Nimble Storage and InfoSight Analytics, Rev. 18.41
• H9TH1S: Designing HPE Nimble Solutions, Rev. 18.21 (01113228)

Audience

Storage administrators who desire additional training on the advanced features of HPE Nimble.

Course Outline

Module 1: Course Introduction

• Agenda
• Topics review

Module 2: Architecture and Advanced Features

• Read and write operations
• Nimble FS
• Triple+ Parity RAID
• Sparing
• Deduplication
• Encryption

Module 3: HPE Nimble Storage Replication

• Disaster recovery terminology (planning, RPO, RTO, etc.)
• SmartReplicate overview
• Async replication
• Sync replication
• Replication capabilities (architecture, topologies incl. fan-out, etc.)
• SmartReplicate operations
• Peer persistence architecture and operations

Module 4: Scale-out

• Scale-to-fit review
• Scale-out groups
• Scale-out pools
• Scale-out operations
• Scale-out limitations and rules

Module 5: Windows Integration

• VSS theory
• VSS in use on Nimble
• NWT components review
• Space reclamation

Module 6: Linux Integration, Oracle and Docker Integration

• HPE Nimble Storage Linux Toolkit (NLT)
• NCM
• HPE Nimble Storage Oracle Application Data Manager
• HPE Nimble Host Tuning Utility/Nimbletune
• Space reclamation

Module 7: VMware Integration

• VMware integration features
• NCM
• VMware vCenter® integration
• SRM integration
• Synchronized snapshots
• APIs and space reclamation
• vVols
• dHCI introduction

Module 8: Backup Solution Integration

• HPE RMC overview and basic architecture
• Veeam overview and basic architecture
• Data Protector overview and basic architecture
• Additional data protection training

Lab outline

Lab 0: HPE vLabs Access

Lab 1: Administrator Settings—Working with Users

• Task 1: Launch HPE Nimble graphical user interface (GUI)
• Task 2: HPE Nimble Array administration
• Task 3: Creating and connecting to a volume
• Task 4: Connect the server to the HPE Nimble Storage volume

Lab 2: Replication and Disaster Recovery

• Task 1: Initialize a new array
• Task 2: Configure the upstream array
• Task 3: Configure the downstream array
• Task 4: Replicate a volume collection
• Task 5: Planned outage scenario—temporary transition to the remote DR site.
• Task 6: Unplanned outage scenario—disaster recovery

Lab 3: Multi-Array Groups and Pools

• Task 1: Review current pool status
• Task 2: Adding an array to the default pool
• Task 3: Observing capacity and volume behavior
• Task 4: Connect the server to the HPE Nimble Storage volume
• Task 5: Understanding how new volumes and data placement is managed
• Task 6: Removing an array from a pool and assigning the array to a new pool
• Task 7: Moving a volume between pools
• Task 8: Merging two pools in a group
• Task 9: Removing or evacuating an array from a pool and group

Lab 4: Using and Understanding Advanced Volume Features

• Task 1: Create a volume
• Task 2: Working with volume pinning—volume performance attribute
• Task 3: Connect the server to the FSserver06 volume
• Task 4: Create volumes using volume performance attribute
• Task 5: Connect the server to the FSserver10 volume
• Task 6: Connect the server to the FSserver11 volume
• Task 7: Working with deduplication
• Task 8: Working with volume limits—QoS
• Task 9: Working with encryption

Lab 5: Working with Linux Integration

• Task 1: Logging into the Linux server
• Task 2: Installing the HPE Nimble Storage Linux Toolkit (NLT)
• Task 3: Working with Nimble Connection Manager for Linux
• Task 4: Working with settings

Lab 6: VMware Integration

• Task 1: Register the Nimble plug-in
• Task 2: Nimble Connection Manager
• Task 3: Create a Nimble-backed datastore
• Task 4: Clone a Nimble backed datastore
• Task 5: Grow a Nimble-backed datastore
• Task 6: Create a virtual machine on a Nimblebacked datastore

Lab 7: Working with vVols

• Task 1: Register the Nimble Storage Protocol Endpoint with vCenter
• Task 2: Create a vVol container on a HPE Nimble Storage array
• Task 3: Create a Nimble-backed vVol datastore
• Task 4: Create a VM storage policy
• Task 5: Create a VM based on a storage policy
• Task 6: Delete and restore a vVol backed VM

Lab 8: HPE Nimble Backup Integration

• Task 1: Connect to the Veeam backup system
• Task 2: Configure VMware vSphere as a managed server
• Task 3: Add the HPE Nimble Storage array
• Task 4: Create a backup job
• Task 5: Remove a disk on a virtual machine
• Task 6: Validate the recovery of the lost disk