As a popular Dell Proven Professional certification, the Dell Midrange Storage Solutions Design 2023 (D-MSS-DS-23) is available to validate your ability to design modern midrange storage solutions using Dell Technologies platforms, with a strong focus on Dell Unity and PowerStore systems. It is aimed at storage professionals who want to formalize and prove their design skills around performance, capacity, and resilience in real production environments.

Overview of the D-MSS-DS-23 Exam

The D-MSS-DS-23 exam sits in Dell Technologies’ midrange storage certification track and is centered on designing solutions rather than simply administering existing systems. It is built around current-generation Dell midrange storage platforms, especially Unity and PowerStore, and tests how well you can translate business and workload requirements into sound storage architectures. It is positioned for IT professionals who work in storage, infrastructure, or solutions design roles and who support mid-sized to large enterprise environments.

Target Audience and Prerequisites

This exam is best suited for experienced storage practitioners, including storage administrators, solution architects, pre-sales engineers, and consultants who design or recommend Dell midrange solutions. Candidates are expected to already understand core storage concepts such as RAID, snapshots, replication, and performance tuning, and to have hands-on exposure to Dell Unity and PowerStore. While not strictly mandatory, prior experience implementing or managing these platforms in production and familiarity with sizing and planning tools will make the exam content more approachable.

Key Technologies and Platforms

The core technologies behind the D-MSS-DS-23 exam are Dell Unity and Dell PowerStore midrange storage systems. Unity provides a flexible, unified storage platform capable of supporting block and file workloads, while PowerStore offers a modern, software-driven architecture designed for high performance, data efficiency, and automation. The exam content typically blends the capabilities of both platforms, asking candidates to select the right product, model, or configuration to match requirements around capacity growth, performance, data protection, and integration with application or virtualization stacks.

Major Design Topics Covered

The heart of the D-MSS-DS-23 exam is solution design. Candidates must demonstrate the ability to interpret customer requirements and then:

• Plan and design midrange storage architectures that meet performance, capacity, and availability objectives.
• Apply best practices for Dell Unity and PowerStore layout, data services, and protection mechanisms.
• Perform workload and capacity sizing to ensure that the chosen configuration can meet both current and anticipated future demand.
• Incorporate data protection, business continuity, and disaster recovery into the overall design using replication, snapshots, backup integration, and multi-site strategies.
• Consider operational aspects such as manageability, migration from legacy systems, and day‑2 operations when proposing solutions.

The exam uses scenario-based questions to test whether the candidate can balance trade-offs—for example, performance versus cost, or capacity versus resilience—rather than simply recalling product features.

Format and Exam Experience

While exact numbers such as item count and duration may change over time, the D-MSS-DS-23 exam is typically delivered as a proctored, multiple-choice, and scenario-driven test through Dell’s authorized channels. You can expect situational questions that describe a customer environment, existing infrastructure, and constraints, followed by options for possible designs. Success on the exam depends on recognizing which design best satisfies all the stated requirements and aligns with Dell’s recommended best practices for midrange solutions.

Why the Exam Matters

Earning the D-MSS-DS-23 Dell Midrange Storage Solutions Design certification signals that a professional can go beyond routine administration and actively design robust midrange storage solutions. For individuals, it strengthens a résumé for roles such as storage architect, solutions designer, and senior infrastructure engineer, particularly in environments that rely on Dell midrange platforms. For organizations, having certified professionals on staff helps ensure that storage investments are planned and implemented correctly, reducing risk while improving performance and scalability. As Unity and PowerStore continue to be widely deployed in data centers, validated design skills around these systems remain highly relevant in the job market.