Hi everyone, I’m currently preparing for the NS0-163: NetApp Certified Data Administrator (NCDA) ONTAP exam and wanted to reach out to this community for some honest guidance and shared experiences. I’ve been reviewing the official documentation and going through some training material, but I’m still unsure if I’m focusing on the right areas. A few questions I’ve been struggling with: How in-depth should I go with ONTAP CLI commands vs System Manager GUI? Are scenario-based questions common on the NS0-163 exam, or is it more straightforward? Any specific NetApp documentation or hands-on lab exercises you found especially helpful? How much weight is given to storage efficiency, SnapMirror, and high availability concepts? Also, for those who have recently passed the exam—did you rely mostly on official NetApp training, or did you find practice exams or third-party resources beneficial? I'm aiming to pass this on my first attempt and would love to hear how others approached it. Any insights—big or small—would be really appreciated! Thanks so much in advance. – James Brad
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Hi all, my question is how the efficient preparation for the Netapp exam should look like. To be honest, I have no practical experience with storage devices. Neverthless, I have done some Netapp labs, which I find cool. So, what is better? Just read the 3000+ pages of documentation? Doing some labs? The thing is that the questions starts with the hypothetical claim - what would you do if you experienced this and that issue? I have no clue about this possibilities and how to solve them. Even the Netapp virtual course is not much helpful, since it doesnt prepare for the exam itself. Then, I would say, it is fair to create a prerequisite certification or course or whatever, which should be interstage between no experience and full NCDA knowledge. Then, I can read hundreds of text, but I do not know what is important what not. Simply, I can not measure my improvement, which is higly frustrating. Maybe it would be wiser to have 3 levels of NCDA, lets say Bronze level, Silver level and Golden level of knowledge within one NCDA certificate. Cheers!
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