Cisco is currently working on developing some level of certification for partners, this is still under development . As for understanding what you will require as base knowledge will be an complete understanding of Fibre Channel technology, SAN networking components, i.e. Host Bus Adaptors, basic storage arrays, SCSI protocol, and application access to it's need storage.
There are industry certifications such as the one offered through SNIA, also different classes can be picked up from such training partners like Medusa.