Cisco and NetApp FlexPod Design Specialist Certification Info
The Cisco and NetApp FlexPod Design Specialist certification is designed for management professionals engaged in storage and data. Specialists such as field and system engineers, professional service consultants, channel partners who are centered on FlexPod solution enablement are the best audience for that designation. This is a technical certification that checks your comprehensive knowledge of tools and standards to evaluate main capacity features and requirements of the FlexPod integrated solution. To gain this Cisco certification, candidates have to pass the 500-173 exam.
Passing the 500-173 (FPDESIGN) exam also known as Designing the FlexPod Solution v2.0 is the only requirement on the way of earning this certification. This evaluation will check if a candidate is knowledgeable of hardware components which relate to the FlexPod Solution and the process for selecting the proper hardware. The exam lasts for 90 minutes and will cost you $300.
Speaking of the exam content, it covers 6 topics. The first one is known as FlexPod Design. In this part, your skills to work with FlexPod components based upon customer workloads, the support options for FlexPod, and a solution that meets the customer requirements and involves FlexPod best practices will be assessed. For that purpose, you should be ready to deal with FlexPod rules, best practices, business connectivity, scale, and performance requirements. In addition, you should be able to provide cooperative support, as well as partner and solution.
The second topic focuses on compute. This involves testing your skills in describing the Cisco USB components of the FlexPod designs, such as B- and C-Series, Fabric Interconnections, VICs, and IOMs. You should also be knowledgeable of how to configure the logical components of the UCS server, which include VSANS, profiles, databases, HyperVisor, and templates.
The third topic is all about storage. Here, you should be able to describe NetApp storage components and storage protocol considerations which refer to the FlexPod designs. In addition, your knowledge of the data protection features and backup for FlexPod design will be checked. Besides, you should demonstrate your knowledge of the following data protection features: data protection, data security, data backup and restore.
The fourth topic refers to networking. In this part, you should show that you are proficient in describing Cisco networking components, such as ACI, MDS, and Nexus that refer to FlexPod designs. Your knowledge of FlexPod networking configurations which include VLANs and VPCs will also be measured.
The aim of the fifth topic is to check your skills in security. This implies that you are able to describe access control methods used for implementing FlexPod solutions. These include LDAP, RADIUS and AD. The ability to use the following considerations, such as IP Spaces, VLANs, VSANs, and SVMs, in creating a reliable multitenancy design will be evaluated. To add more, you should be ready to describe control methods for FlexPod solutions.
The sixth topic is the final one in this Cisco exam and revolves around tools. Your ability to perform fundamental maintenance tasks for the IX5000 endpoint and for the infrastructure that supports the IX5000 will be checked. Additionally, your skills to upgrade considerations for the IX5000 Series will be tested.
Thus, after successful completion of the exam, you will obtain the Cisco and NetApp FlexPod Design Specialist certification.