DEA-1TT5 Storage Management and Monitoring 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'capacity planning' in storage management?
- Measuring the physical dimensions of a data center for equipment placement
- The process of forecasting future storage needs based on growth trends and ensuring sufficient capacity is available before storage runs out (Correct answer)
- Planning backup schedules based on data capacity
- Calculating the number of RAID sets needed for a new array
Correct answer: The process of forecasting future storage needs based on growth trends and ensuring sufficient capacity is available before storage runs out
Capacity planning analyzes current usage, growth trends, and workload forecasts to predict when more storage will be needed and ensure timely procurement to prevent capacity exhaustion.
Question 2: What does a storage management console typically provide?
- Only backup scheduling and restore functions
- A centralized interface for provisioning volumes, monitoring performance and capacity, configuring replication, and managing alerts across storage systems (Correct answer)
- A tool only for configuring RAID sets on a single array
- A network management tool for monitoring SAN switches
Correct answer: A centralized interface for provisioning volumes, monitoring performance and capacity, configuring replication, and managing alerts across storage systems
A storage management console provides a unified view across storage systems for provisioning, performance monitoring, capacity management, event alerting, and configuration management.
Question 3: What is a 'storage performance baseline' and why is it important?
- The minimum performance level required in an SLA
- A documented record of normal storage performance metrics used to identify anomalies and diagnose performance degradation (Correct answer)
- The out-of-box performance rating from the storage vendor
- The maximum IOPS a storage system can sustain before failing
Correct answer: A documented record of normal storage performance metrics used to identify anomalies and diagnose performance degradation
A performance baseline captures normal operating metrics (IOPS, latency, throughput, queue depth) under typical workloads, providing a reference point for detecting when performance deviates from expected behavior.
Question 4: What is 'QoS' (Quality of Service) in storage management?
- A measure of the quality of data stored on disk
- Policies that control the maximum or minimum IOPS or bandwidth allocated to specific volumes or workloads to prevent resource contention (Correct answer)
- A compliance rating for storage systems meeting industry standards
- The quality tier assigned to different storage media types
Correct answer: Policies that control the maximum or minimum IOPS or bandwidth allocated to specific volumes or workloads to prevent resource contention
Storage QoS policies set performance guarantees or limits for specific volumes, ensuring that a single workload cannot consume all storage resources and starve other applications.
Question 5: What does SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) provide in storage monitoring?
- Block-level data transfer between storage systems
- A standard protocol for monitoring and managing network and storage devices, enabling centralized collection of alerts and status information (Correct answer)
- A security protocol for encrypting storage management traffic
- A protocol for synchronizing time between storage management servers
Correct answer: A standard protocol for monitoring and managing network and storage devices, enabling centralized collection of alerts and status information
SNMP enables storage arrays and switches to send traps (alerts) to management systems and allows management software to query device status, making it a standard integration method for storage monitoring.
Question 6: What is 'storage utilization' and what is a typical acceptable utilization threshold?
- The ratio of used storage to total available capacity; typically 70-80% is considered the practical maximum before performance and management risk increases (Correct answer)
- The number of I/O operations the storage handles per second at peak load
- The percentage of storage capacity allocated to backup operations
- The total number of drives installed versus maximum drive slots
Correct answer: The ratio of used storage to total available capacity; typically 70-80% is considered the practical maximum before performance and management risk increases
Storage utilization measures how much of the available capacity is being used; maintaining utilization below 70-80% leaves headroom for growth, temporary spikes, and RAID rebuild operations without risking capacity exhaustion.
DEA-1TT5 Storage Management and Monitoring 1
What is 'capacity planning' in storage management?