HP0-J73 HP ATP – Storage Solutions V1 Passed!

Good times I managed to pass my first HP Storage exam HP0-J73 HP ATP – Storage Solutions V1 yesterday. This exam is part of the HP Storage certification track which I covered here.  As with any exam I can’t mention any specifics but I’ll list what I used to study as it will hopefully be useful for others taking this Exam.

 

  • First off I took the official course 00729763 Designing HP SMB Storage Solutions
  • I looked at the official HP ExpertOne exam preparation guide to see how the exam topics were weighted, this is also show below

  • Breaking the above table down the really key things to know are:
    • All about the HP Storage products and their features, spend a good proportion of your study time on this. Think of it from a pre-sales point of view, for each product you will need to know it’s features, which product in the range does what and how it scales, plus a bit about the software / licencing options available for it
    • Know the HP storage tools SBW, HP Storage Sizer etc all quite easy stuff and covered on the course. If you have time, install some of them and have a play. Again you won’t need real detailed knowledge just which tool to use when and how they interact with each other.
    • Know your basics of storage, different drive types, Raid levels their use cases etc
  • Read the student course book, this has lots of good information in it and should highlight where the gaps in your knowledge exist
  • The best way to gain product knowledge I found was from the QuickSpecs for each product. You can find all the QuickSpecs here . The main products you will need to know about are StoreServ (3Par), StoreEasy, StoreOnce, StoreVirtual, Data Protector and MSL tape Libraries. Know which product to choose for what scenario and also know within a product range which model you would choose i.e. how they scale, which is the performance model etc.
  • If you have time to play with some of the products and get hands on experience great, if not don’t worry, I don’t think you will get many console type question on how to perform specific tasks, base your learning on things you would need to know for design decisions
  • On the product you’re less familiar with take a look on YouTube there are lots of Chalk Talk’s and other HP videos that will help you to learn the main features of products
  • The products I was less familiar with I googled and read the basic install procedures etc, you won’t need to memorise this but it gave me a feel for the architecture of a product and how its various components fitted together
  • Take a look at the additional recommended reading in the HP ExpertOne exam preparation guide . The HP SAN design Guide and HP 3Par best practices are listed, these are beefy documents so get a feel for what kind of information they give you but don’t try and memorise them
  • Do the practice questions in HP ExpertOne exam preparation guide

Good luck!

HP Storage Certifications

I am currently studying for the first in the series of HP storage qualifications so thought this was a good chance to look at what’s available on the HP Storage track in terms of certifications. A good place to start exploring HP certifications in general is http://www.certificationexplorer.com, this website lets you choose what track you ’re interested in e.g. servers, networking, or storage for example and see what learning routes are available. When you find a course you are interested in you can also use this website to register for it.

 

The HP Storage track like lots of vendors starts off with a single exam no matter which path you want to go down, this certification is HP ATP – Storage Solutions V1 (HP0-J73), and is the one I am currently studying for. The certification name its self doesn’t give much away but the course title; Designing HP SMB Storage Solutions gives a bit more of a clue. Essentially the exam looks at the broad range of HP Storage products their use cases, the tools to assist you and a basic overview of storage technology in general. The course itself had interesting elements, the best bit being a look at what tools are out there to help you with designing and supporting HP products, however in general it came across as having quite a strong pre-sales feel to it.

 

Where HP’s approach differs a little from other vendors is when you start to move onto the next stage. Whereas with other vendors you normally study around a specific product and specialise in that, HP’s courses are much wider requiring a knowledge of all their major products. I think this has both positives and negatives you’re certainly not going to get bored but how many people are really working in 100% HP environment and will have the necessary detailed knowledge of all the products required. Also it could be a little taxing on the brain.

Once you have the first exam out the way you can go down 2 separate tracks shown below, the HP ASE – Storage Solutions Integrator being more hands on and the HP ASE – Storage Solutions Architect V1 more for the architects who like to draw pretty pictures. Both the solutions integrator and solution architect consist of 3 exams, again you will find all the details on certification explorer. Finally once you have all that done there is the master qualification which is a single exam available only on the architect track.

There is a 3Par exam HP0-J70 Implementing HP 3PAR StoreServ Solutions which is a requirement of the solutions integrator route.

 

Anyway less chat and more studying, see you on the other side.