DES-4122 test - Specialist - Implementation Engineer PowerEdge Version 2.0 Updated: 2024

Inside Dell EMC's massive storage manufacturing facility in Franklin, Mass., are several large environmental stress screening chambers that make sure there are no faulty components inside products like VxBlock, VMAX, VPLEX, XtremIO and VxRack.

"What we're doing here is testing all of our new service processor boards and I/O modules that go into those boards, including our solid state disk drives. So any type of circuit board, we do testing here," said Malcolm Osborne, director of operations for the Dell EMC facility, who has been with Dell EMC and EMC before that for more than two decades.

The manufacturing facility contains 300,000 square feet of testing, labs and assembly areas that house technicians, production associates and software engineers.

[Related: Dell EMC Ups Its Storage Game]

In one portion of the facility Dell EMC puts hardware components through a rigorous environmental stress testing that exposes them to vibration, voltage changes and extreme temperature shifts ranging from 14 degrees to 130 degrees. "That temperature will actually fluctuate every three hours. It will go from 14 [degrees] up to the top temperature," said Osborne.

The testing aims to weed out any components that contain latent defects that might impact operation down the road after a customer purchases the Dell EMC equipment.

"What we found through the process of environmental stress screening, is we're able to actually pull those failures out early on in the process and fairly quickly instead of something possibly failing multiple years or a year down the road," said Osborne.

Quinten Plummer began writing professionally in 2008. He has more than six years in the technology field including five years in retail electronics and a year in technical support. Plummer gained his experience in music by producing for various hip-hop acts and as lead guitarist for a band. He now works as a reporter for a daily newspaper.

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Dell Computer EMC

Dell is positioning the new Clariion CX600, which EMC unveiled this week, as its high-end array, and using it to enter the heterogeneous Unix/NT enterprise space, said Matt Brisse, Dell product manager for the new array, called the Dell/EMC CX600.

Dell will also target 100 percent Unix shops for the first time with this array, Brisse said.

"Dell has a commodity-based sales model," he said. "We can bring a value to those customers, where before they could only use proprietary or monolithic products. . . . Traditionally, Dell has a maniacal focus on costs. Now we can bring this to the Unix market."

While Dell currently offers NT and Linux servers, it does have the storage management software capabilities to leverage in mixed Unix/NT environments for a seamless user model, Brisse said.

Eighty percent of Dell's systems consultants are now Unix-certified, thanks to training and other support from partners such as EMC, Brisse said.

Consulting, planning, design and implementation services for the Clariion will be done by Dell-badged employees or, if customers prefer, personnel from third parties such as EMC, said Brisse. Dell employees are currently going through thousands of training sessions each day, including mandatory Unix training, leveraging EMC procedures, he said.

Further cementing the Dell bond with EMC is the first public acknowledgement of a manufacturing arrangement between the two. EMC executives this week said an entry-level version of the CX600 is planned to be introduced six to eight months later. The entry-level model will be manufactured by both EMC and Dell, but EMC's solution providers will be tapped to resell the EMC version.

Solution providers are concerned about Dell's low-cost push into the enterprise and how that will affect their EMC business.

The problem is not just that Dell comes in with lower numbers, said Hope Hayes, president of Alliance Technology Group, a Hanover, Md.-based EMC partner. It is more a case of how the vendor combines products and moves margins between various products to compete in the storage space.

"We see customers say they want to buy Dell servers or other products," Hayes said. "They say they also want disks. We can bring in the disks. But if Dell hears of the deal, they will come in and move things around to make the numbers. You can never beat Dell on price."

One solution provider who requested anonymity said the Dell model is driving prices down and putting pressure on margins.

"We focus on value, so Dell's model is contrary to ours. Yes, you can argue that you can make it up on value services. But we like to get margin on the hardware, too. When [Dell's in the picture, it becomes more of a price-driven scenario than a value-driven scenario. The lower end you get, the more formidable the competition with Dell.

At the lower end, deals are more margin-driven anyway, the solution provider said. "The trick to competing with Dell is know when to walk," he said. "If the price is the sole determining factor, it's hard to compete."

Short-term spiffs and special pricing to Dell from EMC shows that EMC's direct guys don't understand marketing, said another solution provider. "Sales people are coin-operated," the solution provider said. "But what about us? We are always trying to win the direct guys' hearts. We bring them into accounts. But they can make more money with Dell. Sure, EMC is saying it's moving into the channel. But the biggest beneficiary to that is their Dell relationship."

Not all solution providers agree that EMC's relationship with Dell hurts the channel.

James Kernan, president and CEO of Networks Plus Technology Group, a San Diego-based solution provider, said his company resells Dell products, including the EMC-made Clariion storage arrays, and even does subcontracting for Dell on services such as on-site consulting, design, installation and support. "This happens especially if we are in the account and create the opportunity for Dell," he said.

It helps Networks Plus that not many people resell Dell, said Kernan. "We actually make more margin on Dell than with many so-called channel-friendly vendors," he said. "If you sell Dell as a solution instead of as a single box, it works."

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Submitting a new device for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing seems a little like showing up for the final exam after skipping all the lectures. You might get lucky and pass, but it really would have been smarter to take a few of the quizzes to see how things were going during the semester. Similarly, it would be nice to know you’re not making any boneheaded mistakes early in the design process, which is what this DIY TEM cell is all about.

We really like [Petteri Aimonen]’s explanation of what a TEM cell, or transverse electromagnetic cell, is: he describes it as “an expanded coaxial cable that is wide enough to put your device inside of.” It basically a cage made of conductive material that encloses a space for the device under test, along with a stripline going down its center. The outer cage is attached to the outer braid of a coaxial cable, while the stripline is connected to the center conductor. Any electric or magnetic field generated by the device inside the cage goes down the coax into your test instrument, typically a spectrum analyzer.

[Petteri]’s homebrew TEM is made from a common enough material: copper-clad FR4. You could use double-sided material, or even sheet copper if you’re rich, but PCB stock is easy to work with and gets the job done. His design is detailed in a second post, which goes through the process of designing the size and shapes of all the parts as well as CNC milling the sheets of material. [Petteri] tried to make the joints by milling part-way through the substrate and bending the sheet into shape, but sadly, the copper didn’t want to cooperate with his PCB origami. Luckily, copper foil tape and a little solder heal all wounds. He also incorporated a line impedance stabilization network (LISN) into the build to provide a consistent 50-ohm characteristic impedance.

How does it work? Pretty well, it seems; when connected to a TinySA spectrum analyzer, [Petteri] was able to find high-frequency conductive noise coming from the flyback section of a switch-mode power supply. All it took was a ferrite bead and cap to fix it early in the prototyping phase of the project. Sounds like a win to us.

With support from Dell EMC, and in association with Intel and Microsoft, Dippy's Naturenauts offers a mobile-friendly interactive experience for children aged seven to eleven.

A fun activity that supports Dippy on Tour, Dippy and Fern the fox lead kids through a series of exploratory games that encourage them to venture outdoors and interact with the nature in their area while learning about science.

Through their generous support of Dippy on Tour and Dippy's Naturenauts, Dell EMC helped the Museum to help the next generation of scientists engage with the natural world through a leading a digital experience, guiding and engage them in scientific thinking. 

After acquiring acquired EMC in a $60 billon-plus deal last year, the merged entity, Dell EMC has now announced major platform refreshes to its enterprise storage platform, VMAX, as well as the next generation XtremIO purpose-built All-Flash array to provide IT