Data Storage Associate (DSA) Certification
The Pure Certified Data Storage Associate highlights your knowledge of a complete multi-vendor enterprise storage solution. Show that you have the networking, virtualization and container, storage, cloud, data protection, and host knowledge to operate industry-recognized storage technology and solutions.
Exam Preparation
All on-demand courses are currently available at no charge through the Pure Academy with a login ID and password. Register for instructor-led training (ILT) and virtual instructor-led training (vILT) through your Pure Partner or Channel Account Manager.
See the Pure Certified Data Storage Associate Prep Course Overview for more details.
Exam Content Outline
The exam itself consists of 60 multiple choice scored questions with a 120 minute time limit, covering the following topics:
| 1 | Networking | 20% |
| 1.01 | Recognize fibre channel use cases | |
| 1.02 | Differentiate fibre channel from ethernet | |
| 1.03 | Identify switch types, cable, and connector options | |
| 1.04 | Explain fibre channel concepts | |
| 1.05 | Recognize different load balancing algorithms like ECMP, FSPF | |
| 1.06 | Understand multipathing and how to efficiently use multiple paths | |
| 1.07 | Define different technologies for maximizing throughput across fibre channel and ethernet networks | |
| 1.08 | Explain iscsi concepts | |
| 1.09 | Explain ethernet concepts | |
| 2 | Virtualization and Containers | 10% |
| 2.01 | Identify difference between bare metal and virtualized service storage and use cases | |
| 2.02 | Recognize impact of oversubscription | |
| 2.03 | Identify different types of containers and orchestration | |
| 3 | Storage | 30% |
| 3.01 | Describe different storage access protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS, NVMEoF) | |
| 3.02 | Define the different networking for various storage types | |
| 3.03 | Explain the storage access layer for block storage | |
| 3.04 | Recognize use cases for DAS, SAN, and NAS | |
| 3.05 | Recognize different data protection schemes such as RAID, erasure coding | |
| 3.06 | Differentiate between disc, flash, RAM | |
| 3.07 | Recognize use cases for different storage types | |
| 3.08 | Indicate architectural advantages of scale up vs scale out | |
| 3.09 | Identify architectural advantages of active-active vs active-passive | |
| 4 | Cloud | 5% |
| 4.01 | Identify different cloud storage providers | |
| 4.02 | Recognize benefits of public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid | |
| 4.03 | Identify when to apply file, block, object storage types to cloud deployments | |
| 5 | Data Protection | 20% |
| 5.01 | Recognize benefits of different replication technologies like sync, async, nearsync | |
| 5.02 | Recognize benefits of different requirements for disaster recovery like recovery point objective, recovery time objective, and fault domains | |
| 5.03 | Identify different backup solutions | |
| 5.04 | Describe snapshot technology and its benefits | |
| 5.05 | Explain differences between application consistency and crash consistency and its use cases | |
| 5.06 | Define security domains like authentication, authorization, and accountability | |
| 5.07 | Discuss benefits of encryption and what data should be encrypted | |
| 5.08 | Recognize how to prevent and mitigate ransomware attacks | |
| 6 | Hosts and Why Customers Have Them | 15% |
| 6.01 | Explain basic data center technologies especially related to storage | |
| 6.02 | Recognize different types of servers that might access storage |
Exam Registration
Once you are ready, register for your exam at the Pure Storage Certification Shop Front, as outlined in Step 2 of our Certification Experience Guide.