EMC Proven Professional Spotlight: Nasia Ullas

Employer: PSEG

Function/Role: Senior Consultant: EMC SAN

Location: Newark, New Jersey

Area of Expertise: EMC Storage Area Network Administrator

Certification(s) Achieved:

• Information Storage Associate (EMCISA)
• Storage Administrator, RecoverPoint Specialist Version 1.0 (EMCSA)
• Storage Administrator, Storage Area Network (SAN) Specialist Version 5.0
• Storage Administrator, Symmetrix Business Continuity Specialist Version 5.0 (EMCSA)
• Storage Administrator, VNX Solutions Specialist Version 7.0  E20-001  Information Storage and Management

Knowledge Sharing Articles:

• How I Survived Escalations (2014)
• Disk Usage and Trend Analysis of Multiple Symmetrix Arrays Configured with FAST/VP (2013)

Education: Bachelor in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Government Engineering College, Trivandrum, Kerala, India

ECN:nasiamohamedullas

LinkedIn: Nasia Ullas

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Can you briefly describe your background, for example, how did you first become interested in IT?

I was a campus hire at Wipro and was recruited to work as a Product Support Engineer for CLARiiON arrays. From there started my journey with EMC products. I moved on to work on Symmetrix boxes. But it is when I started my career as an EMC Storage Administrator with IBM that I started enjoying my work. I have experience on arrays ranging from legacy models like CLARiiON, DMX, Celerra, Centera, and Rainfinity to VMAX, VNX, Isilon, XtremIO, and VPLEX boxes. I have also worked on Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, and Migration Solutions like SRDF, Open Replicator, Time Finder and more recently, RecoverPoint.

What most interests you about your work?

What most interests me about my work is that the field is constantly evolving and I love to learn new technology and master it. I am also passionate about making life and work easier for my customers as well as colleagues, be it through implementing better technology or utilizing all the features available with a product or automating tasks. I also believe in sharing my knowledge and enjoy conducting Knowledge Transfer sessions.

Are you active in the EMC Proven Professional Community or the ECN?

I constantly refer to ECN for answers to my questions, and I also ask most of my technical questions in the ECN community for which I have received prompt answers.

How has the EMC Proven Professional Program benefitted you professionally?

It has immensely benefitted me. I believe that when I get certified, it’s like multiplying my work experience on a product by many years. While nothing can replace actual work experience, there are many facets of a product we may not know or use, until we read and study about it. As I mentioned, I believe in making the life of my customers easier and better, and the EMC Professional Program is a very well organized learning program, in that I know what to study and what to get certified for, as the demands of my job change. And because it isn’t easy to get certified, once I complete it, I know that I am a specialist in the product.

You have written two Knowledge Sharing articles. Can you tell us about your experience writing for the Knowledge Sharing competition?

This was an experience that really changed my perception about how to present an idea and research all aspects of it. It’s one thing to know or have an idea, and it is another to comprehensively present it. It required deep analysis and data collection, not to mention clear communication skills.

Where do you get your ideas from? Do you write about your own work experience, or technology that you’re interested in?

My whitepapers were about issues I faced in my job at that time and how I overcame those issues. I wrote about end customers wanting to know the disk space usage when we had no direct way to report it. With all the technologies in place, the space usage has stopped being straightforward. But the higher management doesn’t need to know that. So my whitepaper was about how to get this data to them.

Has being published benefited you professionally? How?

I was working for HP when I got published, and this got me numerous accolades, including being awarded HP’s International Leading the Way award and Inspiring Women in Technology Award. I would also like to believe that when my family unexpectedly moved to the USA from India, this helped me in finding employment in PSEG that matched my experience.

Do you plan on entering the 2016 Knowledge Sharing Competition?

Yes, I am brainstorming a few ideas with other authors.

What big project are you working on now? Or what major project have you recently completed?

I recently did a hardware refresh of the Cisco MDS switches and successfully migrated around 60 servers to two newer model Cisco SAN switches. I also recently completed a performance enhancement operation on one of our servers which was facing a major performance glitch. I was also able to provide a high level capacity report on VNX for the upper level management, which was similar to what I had written in my whitepaper on VMAX. I have also been working on various Recover Point Solutions for the different disaster recovery and business continuity requirements in my current organization, which is what prompted me to pursuethe RecoverPoint Certification, which I completed just recently.

What projects/technology are you planning on for the future?

Next year, my project is working on a hardware refresh to replace CLARiiON EOL arrays with XtremIO. So my next focus would be on XtremIO and how to use XtremIO Data Protection along with VPLEX virtualization for the various requirements we have in our environment.

Name a major achievement in your career or any awards that you have won. Which have mean the most to you?

Last year I was featured in HP’s ITO Proud to be an Indian, and also was awarded the Leading The Way Award. But what I cherish most is being featured in HP’s Salute to Moms video feature.

Can you describe the value to you of your Proven Professional Certifications? Why did you choose to get certified?

As I mentioned before, apart from the credibility that it gives to my experience, I find that preparing and taking the exam catapults me to a much higher level of knowledge. As anyone who has written the EMC certifications know, it isn’t easy to pass one without being well prepared. And that level of knowledge always makes me confident about my expertise in that subject. Also, it means that I am exposed to many scenarios that my direct experience may not have, and when any of those do come up, I have multiple solutions in hand. It gives me varied perspective to an issue, helps me utilize all the features of a product, and also makes me an expert in fine tuning it, if required.

What advice would you give to someone entering the Proven Professional Program?

It requires dedication, and probably good thorough learning, but believe me, it’s worth it. Because when you are certified it means you KNOW about the product, and you are truly a “Specialist”.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about yourself?

I am the mother of a 19-month old and the wife of a high achieving husband who is also the co-author of my Knowledge Sharing articles. My husband has been my biggest inspiration, and I always strive to follow his example of dedication, focus, and hard work.

Read other EMC Proven Professional Spotlight interviews in the Proven Professional Spotlight Archive