What was the E20-002 exam?
E20-002 was an exam in EMC’s Information Storage Associate family, part of the EMC Proven Professional certification programme. Its closely documented sibling, E20-001 “Information Storage and Management,” awarded the EMC Information Storage Associate credential, which EMC announced under the EMCISA name on its own community site. EMC was acquired by Dell in 2016, and the programme became Dell Technologies Proven Professional. No authoritative page survives for the exact title of E20-002 specifically, so this page does not assert one.
The Certification That Was Deliberately Vendor-Neutral
The interesting thing about EMC’s Information Storage Associate credential is that it was, in substance, not really about EMC products.
The Information Storage and Management curriculum behind it taught storage as a discipline: how storage systems work, what the trade-offs are, and why architectures are designed the way they are. EMC products appeared as examples, but the body of knowledge was broadly applicable, and it was widely used in academic and training settings as a general storage foundation.
That design decision is why this credential aged unusually well compared with product-specific certifications from the same period. A certification that teaches what RAID levels cost you, or why replication distance constrains synchronous replication, remains true regardless of whose array you buy.
What the ISM Curriculum Covered
The Information Storage and Management body of knowledge was comprehensive for a foundational credential:
Storage system architecture, including intelligent storage systems, cache behaviour, and front-end and back-end components.
RAID levels and their trade-offs, the classic material: what each level costs in usable capacity, what it costs in write performance, and how each behaves during a rebuild.
Storage networking, covering direct-attached, network-attached, and storage area networks, plus the protocols behind them including Fibre Channel and iSCSI, and the differences between block and file access.
Business continuity, covering backup and recovery, local and remote replication, and the recovery point and recovery time objectives that drive those designs.
Storage security, including access control and the specific concerns of shared storage infrastructure.
Storage management and monitoring, including capacity and performance management.
Later versions of the curriculum extended into virtualisation, cloud storage, and object storage as the field moved.
What Happened to EMC
Dell acquired EMC in 2016, forming Dell Technologies in what was among the largest technology acquisitions ever completed.
The certification programme became Dell Technologies Proven Professional, carrying forward the structure and much of the content. The legacy EMC certification discussions are now hosted on Dell’s community site, which is where EMC’s original announcements, including the introduction of the EMCISA name, remain accessible.
The product portfolio was substantially rationalised afterward, with overlapping Dell and EMC storage lines consolidated. That affected product-specific credentials considerably more than it affected this one, precisely because the ISM material was not tied to particular arrays.
What This Credential Is Worth Today
As a current certification, it is retired, and the issuing organisation no longer exists under that name.
As a storage foundation, it is among the better-aged credentials in this series, for the reason given above: it taught concepts rather than products.
What transferred, essentially intact:
RAID trade-offs still govern storage design, and the reasoning applies directly to cloud storage redundancy options, where the vendor makes the choice but you still pay for it in cost and durability terms.
The block, file, and object distinction is more important now than it was, since cloud services expose all three and choosing correctly between them is a routine architectural decision.
Replication and recovery objective analysis is unchanged. Synchronous versus asynchronous, and what each implies for distance, cost, and data loss, is exactly the same conversation in multi-region cloud architecture.
Business continuity planning as a discipline, and the gap between what an organisation says it needs and what its infrastructure actually delivers, is timeless and still frequently mishandled.
What dated: the specific EMC product examples, the array model references, and the assumption that storage is something you own and rack.
How to present it. Name it as the credential rather than the bare code, note the vendor history if useful, and be clear it was a foundational credential: “EMC Information Storage Associate (EMC Proven Professional), now Dell Technologies Proven Professional.” Describing it as a vendor-neutral storage foundation is accurate and communicates its actual value better than the exam code does.
A Note on Sourcing
E20-001, “Information Storage and Management,” is well documented as the exam awarding the EMC Information Storage Associate credential, including through EMC’s own community announcement of the EMCISA name. E20-002 sits in the same associate-level storage family.
No authoritative page survives for the exact title, question count, duration, or passing score of E20-002 specifically, so this page states none of them. Third-party sites will supply those details confidently; they sell question banks and are frequently inaccurate, so the figures are omitted rather than repeated unverified.
Where the Path Leads
If you work with Dell storage, Dell Technologies Proven Professional is the direct continuation of this programme, and the associate-level storage material remains recognisable.
If you moved to cloud infrastructure, your ISM foundation is genuinely useful and frequently missing in cloud-native engineers. Understanding durability, replication, and the real cost of redundancy makes cloud storage decisions much better informed than treating storage classes as arbitrary options with different prices.
If you moved toward data protection or resilience work, the business continuity half of the curriculum is directly applicable, and that field grew considerably in prominence as ransomware recovery became a board-level concern.
Verify current Dell Technologies certification requirements directly with Dell, since the programme was restructured following the acquisition.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still take E20-002? No. EMC’s Proven Professional exams from this era are retired, and the programme became Dell Technologies Proven Professional following the 2016 acquisition.
What was the exam called? No authoritative source survives for the exact title of E20-002. Its closely documented sibling E20-001, Information Storage and Management, awarded the EMC Information Storage Associate credential, and E20-002 sits in the same associate-level storage family.
What is EMCISA? The EMC Information Storage Associate credential. EMC announced the name on its own community site, in a post titled “We are renaming the E20-001 Associate credential - Introducing the EMCISA.”
What happened to EMC? Dell acquired EMC in 2016, forming Dell Technologies. The certification programme became Dell Technologies Proven Professional, and legacy EMC certification discussions are hosted on Dell’s community site.
Why did this credential age well? The Information Storage and Management curriculum was substantially vendor-neutral, teaching storage concepts, RAID trade-offs, networking, replication and business continuity rather than one vendor’s products. Those concepts remain true.
Is the knowledge still relevant? Yes. RAID trade-offs, the block, file and object distinction, replication and recovery objective analysis, and business continuity planning all apply directly to cloud storage decisions.
References
Dell Technologies Community. We are renaming the E20-001 Associate credential - Introducing the EMCISA. https://www.dell.com/community/Education-Services/We-are-renaming-the-E20-001-Associate-credential-Introducing-the/td-p/6740136 (Primary source, originally an EMC announcement, for the EMC Information Storage Associate credential name and the E20-001 exam that awarded it)
Dell Technologies Community. E20-001. https://www.dell.com/community/Proven-Professional/E20-001/td-p/6880685 (Legacy EMC Proven Professional discussion, now hosted by Dell following the acquisition)
Dell Technologies. Dell Technologies Proven Professional certification. https://education.dellemc.com/content/emc/en-us/home/certification-overview.html (Current certification programme, successor to EMC Proven Professional)