NetApp Data Protection Overview

[@erelpc]

Why do Netapp put up such a barrier for people interested in learning their technology? I signed up to a guest support account, hoping to get access to their evaluation software/Ontap simulator, but the link doesn't show up. They say give it four hours for your profile to update, but I'm not even sure if it will as I'm not a customer and didn't have a company name to enter in their form (I just entered "student" in that field). I can only guess NCDA is the right track to follow, as that's what your Udemy course says it's for, but the CBT Nuggets course mentions NCSA. So I went on the certifications page on Netapp's website to read up on their available certifications, but it makes no reference to 'NCSA'. This left me even more confused. Do they not want engineers trained in their product? Do they think if they put up these barriers to entry, that it will somehow promote them as a premium solution? No other vendor makes their certification/training tracks such a pain to navigate, so I might just give up on Netapp and learn SAN & storage technologies based off another vendor.

[@erelpc]

I think I'll start with your free SAN & NAS course. But I'm still curious; what's the difference between NCSA and NCDA?

[@Flackbox]

@@erelpc Hi Erel, the NCSA was a lower level certification and retired years ago. I don't mean this as a slight against CBT Nuggets (I think their training material is excellent), their NetApp training covered introductory level basics of the OS a few years ago. NetApp do not control external training companies so you can't really blame them for what CBT Nuggets do or don't offer. Yes the NCDA is the certification you want to get. There is a fully comprehensive NetApp course available which covers the NCDA topics and more from some guy called Neil Anderson at Flackbox ;-) HTH, Neil

[@erelpc]

@@Flackbox haha thanks Neil.