10 Things to Know about Test Drive for PowerMax and Unity - Dell EMC Certification

The Dell EMC Test Drive program consists of pipeline accelerator events for the Dell EMC Enterprise product portfolio. For partners looking to grow deals (and potentially win them faster), here are 10 things you need to know.

1. Test Drives are designed to increase sales closure rates. Getting a prospect into the Test Drive seat offers a chance to accelerate and close deals.
2. They can potentially lead to higher-value deals. The experience is designed to build familiarity and trust in the product—potentially opening the door to bigger and better deals within an account.
3. They can potentially lower the cost of sale. Test Drives are designed to significantly reduce the time and resources needed to close a typical opportunity by helping to simplify and shorten the sales cycle.
4. It’s a hands-on experience for the prospect. Test Drives are one-day, immersive experiences for your prospects. It lets them “get behind the wheel” of an infrastructure product to better understand their use case and prove viability.
5. These events are for the technical crowd. When you reach out to prospective Test Drive accounts, make sure they can send technical decision makers and/or influencers. The experience is focused on the end user.
6. The ideal time: Consideration and Evaluation stages. Test Drives offer a deeper, practical exploration of a product for prospects that have been researching their options and are nearing a decision.
7. They can happen anywhere in the world. Test Drive events are accessible to just about any prospect. Events can take place at a Dell EMC site, a partner site, or at a prospect’s office—across the globe and available in 10 languages.
8. Up to 16 prospects can attend. You can bring a maximum of 16 prospects to any one Test Drive. Ideally, you’ll have at least eight unique prospects with a maximum of two attendees per company.
9. It’s an event in a box. Leave it to the pros to drive the right curriculum and logistics behind the scenes for your key prospects.
10. It’s all about building confidence. The most important potential outcome of a Test Drive is, in one word, confidence—in the product, in making the right decision and in value of the investment.

Our experts say about Dell EMC Certification Exams

3 Secrets to Fast Tracking Your IT Priorities

Easy efficiency

PowerEdge tower servers are built to process and transmit data quickly. This will enable your everyday business applications to run faster and reduce the amount of interruptions. They simplify team collaboration, giving you peace of mind that you are working on the latest revision. They also save data automatically, reducing the threat of re-work.

PowerEdge towers are ideal for on-site, remote, and branch office use. By managing multiple remote servers via one intuitive platform, you can save a trip across town, states, or even countries, depending on your office locations. Additionally, you can choose to conveniently receive alerts and access hardware remotely anytime and anywhere, saving you time and money.

With the ProDeploy suite of services, you can let Dell EMC do the heavy lifting while you focus on your business. Simply tell Dell EMC what applications you’d like to run, and we’ll configure and deploy the server in your office. Set up as much as 66% faster with our ProDeploy suite of services.2 Our team is here to answer any questions and help you plan for your future growth.

PowerEdge towers offer automated proactive and predictive support technology. Resolve potential issues with up to 72% less IT effort using ProSupport Plus and SupportAssist.3 This technology can automatically notify Dell EMC of a potential threat to get a jump start on a solution.

Revenue growth made easier

You run critical business applications that enable you to connect with your customers, prospective customers, and your team. The PowerEdge towers are ideal for most business applications such as file and print, point of sale, collaboration/sharing, databases, mail, and messaging.

PowerEdge towers enable business applications to run quickly with powerful computing capability. These tower servers enable multiple team members to work on the same file and print multiple documents efficiently. The servers also enable faster and reliable payment processing with a secure infrastructure. It allows you to collaborate and connect quickly and efficiently with customers and colleagues around the world.

Time is money. As a business, you never want any of your business applications to stop working. PowerEdge servers are reliable and can reduce the risk of downtime with a hot plug drive option. This would enable your server to work while being serviced. This will keep your business operating around the clock, allowing you additional opportunity to drive your business.

The easy choice for expense reduction

One of the key IT business priorities is to reduce expenses. Among many important things to consider while reducing expense, IT security is imperative. It’s important to not take IT security for granted given all the recent data breaches. One of the best ways to keep expenses down and customer loyalty up is to avoid a security breach.

The average total cost of a data breach in the United States is $7.9 million. The global average total cost of a data breach increased 6.4% from the previous year to $3.86 million.4

With the purpose of protecting our customers, every PowerEdge server come with built-in security. Simply bolting security on after the fact doesn’t work. PowerEdge towers can protect your server from malicious changes with iDRAC9 Enterprise Server Lockdown mode. You can also have peace of mind that your data is backed up automatically.

PowerEdge tower servers can be safer and cheaper than public cloud alternatives. As a matter of fact, Independent research commissioned by Dell EMC uncovered that over 50% of midmarket organizations that have moved a workload from a public cloud service back to on-premise infrastructure cited security and/or cost as a reason for this decision.5

Additionally, PowerEdge tower servers help with future expense reduction because they are made to grow with your business over time. As you continue to scale your business with more demanding business applications, more customers, and more employees, your servers’ will also be able to scale with you.

Our experts say about Dell EMC Certification Exams

DES-2T13 Specialist – Cloud Architect, Cloud Infrastructure Exam

Overview

This exam is a qualifying exam for the Specialist - Cloud Architect, Cloud Infrastructure (DECS-CA) track. This exam focuses on knowledge and skills to successfully design a cloud infrastructure that supports multiple types of services. It tests the ability of data center technology professionals to design robust cloud based infrastructure incorporating components such as cloud management, consumer resources, elasticity, metering, hybrid capabilities, and disaster recovery. Dell EMC provides free practice tests to assess your knowledge in preparation for the exam. Practice tests allow you to become familiar with the topics and question types you will find on the proctored exam. Your results on a practice test offer one indication of how prepared you are for the proctored exam and can highlight topics on which you need to study and train further. A passing score on the practice test

does not guarantee a passing score on the certification exam.

Exam Topics

Topics likely to be covered on this exam include:

Introduction to Cloud Design and Design Parameters (10%)

• Describe digital business imperatives, cloud concepts, cloud

  infrastructure design approaches and goals

• Describe cloud solutions design project lifecycle phases

• Describe cloud reference architecture and various cloud design considerations for compute, storage,     network, CMP, hybrid and multicloud, and application platform and PaaS solution

Data Collection and Analysis (12%)

• Describe data collection process, metrics, and tools

• Describe analysis process, business value analysis, and design best practices

Architecting a Do-It-Yourself Solution (25%)

• Explain the benefits, challenges, and considerations for designing various compute technologies in      a cloud infrastructure

• Explain the benefits, challenges, and considerations for designing various network technologies in      a cloud infrastructure

• Explain the benefits, challenges, and considerations for designing various storage technologies in a cloud infrastructure

Architecting a CI / HCI Solution (18%)

• Explain design decisions and considerations for converged infrastructure

• Explain design decisions and considerations for hyper-converged and cloud in a box infrastructure

Cloud Management Platform (10%)

• Describe the key functions of a CMP, CMP reference architecture, and CMP infrastructure

• Describe the key requirements and considerations for designing CMP solutions

Hybrid Cloud and Multi Cloud (15%)

• Describe the design considerations for hybrid cloud and multicloud

• Explain disaster recovery considerations

Application Development and Deployment Platform (10%)

• Describe the application development and deployment environment and its requirements

• Explain the design considerations of Do-It-Yourself and Packaged PaaS solutions

The percentages after each topic above reflects the approximate distribution of the

total question set across the exam.

Dell EMC Proven Professional Certification Program

The Dell EMC Proven Professional certification program validates your solid understanding of technology and establishes you as a highly skilled talent who can make transformation real, achieve business goals and lead the competition as THE trusted advisor.

Leverage the Dell EMC Proven Professional program to realize your full potential.

• The technology-focused approach addresses concepts and principles that can be applied in all IT environments
• Role-based training and exams cover the full range of Dell EMC's hardware, software and solutions
• New transformation certifications for IT professionals that have a different mindset are able to learn new modern IT technologies, familiar with emerging operating, business and even financial models, and able to partner with the business

Exam Security

The Dell EMC Proven Professional program uses advanced security monitoring to ensure the integrity and value of the certifications you earn.

Candidates are required to provide a digital signature and allow a photo to be taken prior to sitting for an exam. This is an important requirement to deter proxy test taking.

All exams are computer scored immediately upon exam completion. Candidates will receive a paper copy "Exam Score Report" before they depart from the exam center. This report provides a "provisional score," not a final score. The final score is transmitted to the candidate’s CertTracker account only after a statistical analysis is conducted on the exam. This analysis identifies security issues including the use on non-approved materials to prepare for the exam. If a security issue is discovered the candidate will receive an email notification stating their exam results have been invalided. All candidate exam results are typically available in their CertTracker account within three business days.

Dell EMC Gains High Performance Computing Momentum and Expands Portfolio

Dell EMC is announcing momentum in high performance computing (HPC) deployments and new portfolio expansions, designed to help accelerate time to insights in a variety of disciplines, including artificial intelligence, bioscience, weather forecasting and more. Dell EMC also announces that the University of Florida’s Center of Space, High Performance, Reconfigurable Computing (SHREC) has won the 2018 Dell EMC AI Challenge.

“Advances in IT are making HPC systems increasingly more powerful and innovative to accelerate the time necessary to reach new discoveries, but many still believe implementations can be complex,” said Thierry Pellegrino, vice president and general manager of HPC at Dell EMC. “Based on decades of experience with leading institutions, technology partners and strategic customers, Dell EMC provides an extensive portfolio of technologies that simplify HPC adoption to advance research and further democratize HPC. We remain focused on leading the way in HPC innovation and helping organizations of all types and sizes further advance expanding opportunities in artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

Dell EMC fueling research for human progress

Dell EMC continues to be at the forefront of helping customers adopt the latest HPC technologies to fuel a wide range of discoveries and research. Recent customer momentum demonstrates Dell EMC’s commitment to deliver world-class HPC systems that bring together the latest advances in servers, accelerators, liquid cooling and networking:

Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin has selected Dell EMC to develop and deliver its new Frontera supercomputer in 2019, funded by TACC’s $60 million award from The National Science Foundation. At the time of its announcement, in August 2018, Frontera would have been the world’s fifth most powerful system, the third fastest in the U.S. and the largest at any university if completed. The Dell EMC PowerEdge system plans to combine several technical innovations such as CoolIT Systems high-density Direct Contact Liquid Cooling, high performance Mellanox HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand interconnect and next generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. Frontera’s early projects are expecting to include analysis of particle collisions from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, global climate modeling, hurricane forecasting and multi-messenger astronomy.

• The University of Cambridge has expanded its supercomputing capabilities with its “Cumulus - UK Science Cloud.” This new OpenStack system is the UK’s largest academic supercomputer, providing more than two petaflops of performance, powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, Intel® Xeon® processors and Intel® Omni-Path Architecture. To help solve the UK’s most challenging data driven, simulation and AI tasks, Cumulus is open to all UK academics and industry and delivered in partnership with Dell EMC and StackHPC, a UK start-up specialising in the convergence of HPC and Cloud. It is funded with investments totalling over £13 million from STFC (DiRAC/IRIS), EPSRC (Tier 2) and the university.
• Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin has selected Dell EMC to develop and deliver its new Frontera supercomputer in 2019, funded by TACC’s $60 million award from The National Science Foundation. At the time of its announcement, in August 2018, Frontera would have been the world’s fifth most powerful system, the third fastest in the U.S. and the largest at any university if completed. The Dell EMC PowerEdge system plans to combine several technical innovations such as CoolIT Systems high-density Direct Contact Liquid Cooling, high performance Mellanox HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand interconnect and next generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. Frontera’s early projects are expecting to include analysis of particle collisions from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, global climate modeling, hurricane forecasting and multi-messenger astronomy.
• The Ohio Supercomputer Center is deploying its Pitzer Cluster, delivered by Dell EMC. Like TACC’s Frontera system, the Pitzer Cluster will utilize Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with CoolIT’s modular, rack-based Direct Contact Liquid Cooling solution, which allows for increased rack densities, higher component performance potential and better energy efficiency. As a result, it will offer nearly as much performance as the center’s most powerful cluster but require less power and less than half the space. The system will power broad research areas from human genomics to the global spread of viruses.