I passed the EMC E10-001 exam on Thursday, giving me the EMCISA certification. My primary study material was the insanely long-titled Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information in Classic, Virtualized, and Cloud Environments. I went with the Kindle edition to save money as well as the ability to read the book anywhere – phone, laptop, or Kindle.

Everything you need to know for exam success is in this book. I found the first few chapters to be basic IT skills review, but it soon moved into material that I was hazy on – FCoE, object-based storage, and array-based replication technology. It’s a fairly lengthy read at over 500 pages, but I went through the book once, did my Kindle highlighting, then headed over to the practice test.

The practice test lets you know what you got wrong, but not the correct answer. I went back and studied up on the ones that I got wrong. When I got a 90% on the practice test, I booked the exam. Since I’d never taken an EMC exam, I wasn’t sure whether I’d get Microsoft-style pure memorization questions, or Cisco-style conceptual questions. I was pleased to find the EMC questions were more like a Cisco exam. I found the questions to be straightforward, no material beyond what is covered in the book and no trick questions.

With the EMCISA certification knocked out, the path is now clear to pursue a Specialist-level EMC certification.