CiRBA Add-on Workshops

CiRBA Add-on Workshops
CiRBA offers a series of add-on training workshops to broaden student skills and knowledge in specific areas of the CiRBA product. The workshops provide practical experience using the fundamentals learned in the Bootcamp course.

CiRBA Administration Workshop
Deep Dive Data Collection Workshop
Deep Dive Analysis Workshop
VMware Life Cycle Workshop
Ruleset Designer Workshop
Understanding Workload Patterns
Using CiRBA for Health Check Analysis Workshop

The Deep Dive Data Collection and Deep Dive Analysis workshops are core requirements for CiRBA services partners.

Prerequisites

Students must have completed the Bootcamp course before taking any add-on workshop.

Some experience using the CiRBA product prior to taking a workshop is recommended.

Duration

1 day each

Course Fees

$1,000 (USD) per workshop per person, or $500 (USD) per workshop per person for CiRBA Powered Service Providers and Resellers

Volume Discounts are available. Please contact training@cirba.com. The course fee includes all course material and access to CiRBA’s online learning resources and assessments.

Registration

By email at: training@cirba.com. Confirmation will be sent by email within one week of receipt and processing of the registration. You are not registered in the course until you have received an email confirmation.

Material Requirements

Students must bring their own network enabled laptop that can remote desktop (RDP) into a Windows training environment. All other material will be provided during the course.

Registrants will be asked to sign a letter that prohibits the use of the CiRBA license and training databases for customer engagements. The registrant will not copy or duplicate the CiRBA software license or related database without prior written consent of CiRBA.

Workshop Descriptions

CiRBA Administration Workshop

This hands-on workshop is intended for those responsible for maintaining the CiRBA server and agent infrastructure who will assume the role of CiRBA Administrator for their organization. Students are taken through a series of hands-on administrative exercises using typical customer scenarios.

• Managing CiRBA Servers
• CiRBA Collector setup
• System Hierarchies
• System Groups
• Report Templates and Management
• Scheduling Tasks
• Managing Users, User Groups
• Access Control Lists
• Managing System Attributes
• CiRBA Import/Export and Data Scrubbing Utilities
• CiRBA Environment Utilities

Deep Dive Data Collection Workshop

This hands-on workshop takes students through a comprehensive series of data collection exercises using typical customer scenarios. All CiRBA data collection options will be explored and practiced.

• Data Collection Decision Tree – Pros/Cons of each Option
• CiRBA Windows and SNMP Agent-based Audits
• Agentless Audits
• Script-based Audits
• Importing Data into the CiRBA Repository
• The CiRBA Discovery Process

Deep Dive Analysis Workshop

This comprehensive “deep dive” workshop takes students through a hands-on analysis simulation exercise based on a fictitious customer case study.

• Defining Consolidation Goals and Strategies based on Customer Requirements
• Creating and Populating Required Business Attributes
• Validating Analysis Data for Completeness
• Macro Analysis
• Determining Baseline Aggregate Utilization by Platform
• Pre-consolidation Risk Assessment
• Micro Analysis:
• UNIX Application Stacking,
• Solaris Zones Virtualization Analysis
• Windows Virtualization Analysis
• Presenting Results Back to Customer

VMware Life Cycle Workshop

This hands-on workshop explores CiRBA’s Virtualization Analysis functionality specifically for VMware in detail:

• VMware Analysis process using CiRBA
• ESX Server Specification
• Physical Environment Analysis
• ESX Optimization Analysis
• ESX Cluster Design
• Ongoing Management of your virtualized environment

Ruleset Designer Workshop

This hands-on workshop explores CiRBA Reference Rulesets and Ruleset Designer functionality in detail:

• Taxonomy of a CiRBA Rule
• Detailed walkthrough CiRBA Reference Rulesets and the Analysis they produce
• Understanding what you can do with the Ruleset Editor versus the Ruleset Designer
• Use cases for when and how to create new Rulesets using the Ruleset Designer
• Creating new Business Constraint Rulesets
• Creating new Configuration Constraint Rulesets
• Understanding the CiRBA Data Dictionary
• Using the Statistical Distribution report to identify “outliers” as the basis for customer-specific Rulesets
• Rule creation “Best Practices”

Understanding Workload Patterns Workshop

This workshop takes an in-depth look at key personality indicators in quartile-based plots to understand the different types of workload personalities that are present in an environment. Workload patterns and personalities heavily influence how well an application will perform on a given virtualization model, and can have a dramatic effect on the relative capacity of servers.

Through this workshop students will gain an understanding of and be able to identify different workload patterns, including:

• High 3rd/4th Quartile Spread
• High Min/Max Spread
• Narrow Min/Max Spread
• High 3rd Quartile
• Min off the Floor
• Min near the Ceiling
• Max near the Floor
• Flat Floors at CPU Quanta
• Flat Ceilings at CPU Quanta
• Similar Hourly Behavior
• Peaks and Valleys Over Time
• Isolated Peaks in Low Valleys

Using CiRBA for Health Check Analysis Workshop

This hands-on workshop explores CiRBA’s Data Center Intelligence solution from the perspective of on-going health check analysis to minimize risk:

• Identifying “outliers” in your environment and manifestation of configuration “drift”
• Risk Assessment analysis
• Change and Compliance Analysis Reporting
• Deployed Hardware, Software, and Patch Reports