Just took the BCFD (brocade certified fabric designer) exam two days ago. Some tips: Bring some water and food. Good exam, but I am really tired of exams and certifications for now! Also, isn't easy to confuse Brocade Certified Fabric Designer with somebody who makes clothes? Check out my other …

http://brocade.com/education/certification-accreditation/certified-fabric-designer/index.page Data Collection Given a scenario, design a solution that meets the customer's requirements Given a scenario, demonstrate knowledge of resiliency, redundancy, HA, and locality Given a scenario, describe the various documents required in the design assessment Practice by making up many scenarios …

This is a post in series of me studying for the BCFD - Brocade Certified Fabric Designer and it's my comments on the document SAN Design Best Practices. Apparently this document is planned to be updated. The one I have is version 2.1. To find the latest go to My …

http://brasstacksblog.typepad.com/brass-tacks/2012/01/hard-zoning-versus-soft-zoning-in-a-fcfcoe-san.html Usually I don't just post links like this, but I have honestly only just glimpsed through it and it looks very thorough.

Fabric migration planning and implementation Why: faster, better scaling (less switches to manage), running out of ports, hardware refresh, new features. Most of the time is spent assessing, determining strategy, development planning and site preparation. Only 20% is for deployment and validation. The first page describes the order as above …

Second Last module! But that's not the end of it, there are more admin guides, best practices to wade through :) This one is a bit more complicated though, a lot to think about when designing FCR and FCIP SAN networks. FC Routing This is when you have SAN islands (isolated …

Objectives: Discuss general considerations such as attachment, availability, performance and scalability. But also solutions for needs: replication, tape backup, application and databases. This module is quite long. Topologies and Topology Considerations Single Switch Simplest: one switch. HA: use two. Pro: 0 hops. Con: no redundancy. Starting point. Management becomes difficult …

Overview / Preparation Module 3 / SAN Infrastructure The idea for this is for me to write down the things I read about in the modules. As a way for me to learn what they're about and think about them other than just reading them and forgetting them. If I write it …

This is a post in a series where I will go through the modules made available for free by Brocade for the beta test of the BCFD 16Gbps exam. If there's any objection to me writing about these in this detail here please let me know. First module available (is …

BCFD exam is going into Beta testing in January as well! This post will be updated as I move along through the different objectives / documents. // Update 2012-01-15: Added the Knowledge Assessment Test. // Update 2012-01-28: Went through each .pdf and updated some in here. The link to the Brocade page where …