Test 000-958: Enterprise Storage Technical Support V3

Evaluate and Establish Customer Environment and Plans (37%)

1. Evaluate and document current customer environment (e.g., equipment, operating systems, software, staff usage, satisfaction, need for change and growth, application and virtualization)
2. Differentiate storage product features and architectural advantages relevant to customer environment and plans. Contrast with current customer environment and competitive offerings at a level consistent with the customer audience. These features include:
   1. Current storage solution portfolio and commonly occurring previous versions, related software and middleware
   2. Storage products and storage management options
   3. Performance improvements
   4. Systems management
   5. Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS)
   6. Storage Efficiency and Data Protection
   7. Migration and tuning
   8. BC/DR requirements
   9. Scalability and options for growth
3. Demonstrate understanding of key concepts and terminology (IBM, competitive, and industry)
4. Demonstrate ability to gather technical requirements to complete a TCO analysis
5. Identify opportunities (examples such as, but not limited to, data warehousing, deduplication, data compression, Storage Cloud, business resilience, virtualization, consolidation and workload optimized systems)

Apply Product Information (45%)

1. Demonstrate detailed knowledge of product characteristics and product selection
   1. Disk (DS8000, XIV, SONAS)
   2. Tape (TS3500, TS7700)
   3. Deduplication (ProtecTIER)
   4. SAN
2. Demonstrate general knowledge of product characteristics and product selection
   1. SAN Volume Controller
   2. Real-time Compression Appliance
   3. N series (N7700)
   4. Storage Cloud
   5. Tivoli (Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, Tivoli Storage Manager, FlashCopy Manager)
3. Utilize tools, methods, and processes to gain insight into the customer's business problems
   1. Performance planning tools
   2. Capacity planning tools
   3. Techline/CompeteCenter
   4. Configurators
   5. Competitive selling tools, e.g., COMP database
4. Compare IBM solutions to competitive offerings, and articulate IBM strengths
5. Demonstrate basic knowledge of storage connectivity to mainframe systems for DS8000, XIV, TS7700 and TS3500

Installation Planning / Migration Considerations (12%)

1. Identify areas of potential risk associated with installation and migration, discuss with customer, Business Partner involved with the sale, and the IBM team
2. Create a mutually developed implementation and/or migration plan with the customer, including remote support considerations, and identification of skills required for resourcing the project
3. Explain and gain agreement on post installation support responsibilities
4. Describe and perform pre-install Technical and Delivery Assessment using the SAPR process

Installation and Post Installation Support (6%)

1. Facilitate hardware installation and configuration based on solution design, e.g., knowledge of basic installation requirements
2. Recommend the appropriate system management tool to support storage software and subsystem configuration in an existing customer environment