Lesson 4: Monitoring and Troubleshooting Servers Flashcards
- What is a set of concepts and practices for managing information technology (IT) systems, IT services, IT development, and IT operations?
a) ITIL
b) ITWAN
c) HIPAA
d) Rainbow Books
Answer: a) ITIL
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference: Managing Information Technology
Explanation: The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and practices for managing IT systems, IT Service Management (ITSM), IT development, and IT operations. ITIL gives detailed descriptions of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive checklists, tasks, and procedures that any IT organization can tailor to its needs.
- In server management, which approach tries to prevent problems before they occur?
a) reactive
b) proactive
c) rolling
d) dynamic
Answer: b) proactive
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Managing Information Technology
Explanation: When managing your servers, you can take one of two approaches: proactive or reactive. Being proactive means that you are looking ahead and anticipating problems before they disable or degrade your server, service, or application.
- Which step in the troubleshooting methodology would you use to identify and document all symptoms of a problem?
a) discover the problem
b) evaluate system configuration
c) execute a plan
d) take a proactive approach
Answer: a) discover the problem
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Introducing Troubleshooting Methodology
Explanation: Discover the problem is the step used to identify and document problem symptoms. You can search technical information resources, such as Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles, to determine whether the problem is a known condition.
- Which step do you need to check if any changes have been made to your system?
a) discover the problem
b) evaluate system configuration
c) execute a plan
d) take a proactive approach
Answer: b) evaluate system configuration
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Introducing Troubleshooting Methodology
Explanation: During the evaluate system configuration step, you ask the client or customer and check the system’s documentation to determine whether any hardware, software, or network changes have been made, including any new additions. Also check any available logs, including the Event Viewer.
- What program is used to get a quick view of what hardware and software is loaded on a computer?
a) msinfo32.exe
b) sysconf.exe
c) regedit.exe
d) rdc.exe
Answer: a) msinfo32.exe
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: System Information
Explanation: System Information (also known as msinfo32.exe) shows details about your computer’s hardware configuration, components, and software, including drivers. It was originally included with Windows to assist Microsoft support people in determining what a particular machine contains, especially when talking to end users.
- What program do you use to view the Windows logs?
a) rdc.exe
b) sysconf.exe
c) regedit.exe
d) Event Viewer
Answer: d) Event Viewer
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Using the Event Viewer
Explanation: One of the most useful troubleshooting tools is the Event Viewer MMC snap-in, which is essentially a log viewer. Whenever you have problems, look in the Event Viewer to see any errors or warning that may reveal what a problem is.
- What part of the boot-up process initializes hardware and finds an operating system to load?
a) POST
b) MBR boot
c) WinBoot
d) PXEBoot
Answer: a) POST
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Booting the System
Explanation: Every time you turn on a computer, it goes through the Power-On Self Test (POST), which initializes hardware and finds an operating system to load.
- In Windows Server, what main part of Windows is responsible for various system services and process and memory management?
a) WINLoad
b) HAL.DLL
c) NTOSKRNL.EXE
d) BOOTMGR
Answer: c) NTOSKRNL.EXE
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Booting the System
Explanation: NTOSKRNL.EXE is the main part of Windows known as the kernel. It is responsible for various system services and process and memory management.
- What is the first Windows file loaded during boot-up?
a) NTLDR
b) NTDetect.com
c) NTSOSKRNL.EXE
d) BOOTMGR
Answer: a) NTLDR
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference: Booting the System
Explanation: If the system is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, the first file loaded is the NT loader (NTLDR), which reads the boot.ini file to display the boot menu or to boot from a partition or volume.
- Which part of the disk contains NTLDR or BOOTMGR?
a) MBR
b) VBR
c) partition table
d) kernel volume
Answer: b) VBR
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference: Booting the System
Explanation: A volume boot record (VBR), also known as a volume boot sector or a partition boot sector, is a type of boot sector—stored in a disk volume on a hard disk, floppy disk, or similar data storage device—that contains code for booting an operating system such as NTLDR and BOOTMGR.
- Which file displays a boot menu displaying which operating system to boot on a server running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003?
a) NTOSKRNL.EXE
b) ntdetect.com
c) boot.ini
d) WINLoad
Answer: c) boot.ini
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference: Understanding Boot.ini
Explanation: The Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 NTLDR will read the boot.ini file to determine which operating system to load, even if your system only has one operating system. If your system has multiple operating systems, the boot.ini file can display a boot menu so that you can choose which operating system to load and automatically select a default operating system if one is not selected during boot-up.
- What stores the boot-time configuration data for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008?
a) NTOSKRNL
b) ntdetect
c) boot.ini
d) BCD
Answer: d) BCD
Difficulty: Hard
Section Reference: Understanding BCDEdit
Explanation: Boot Configuration Data (BCD) is a firmware-independent database for boot-time configuration data used by Microsoft’s Windows Boot Manager found with Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. To edit the Boot Configuration, you typically use Bcdedit.exe.
- What boot option starts Windows with a minimal set of drivers and services?
a) Safe mode
b) Last Known Good Configuration
c) Directory Services Restore Mode
d) Debugging Mode
Answer: a) Safe mode
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Understanding Advanced Boot Menu
Explanation: Safe mode starts Windows with a minimal set of drivers and services. If you make a change to the system and Windows no longer boots, you can try safe mode.
- What mode starts Windows with the last registry and driver configuration that worked successfully?
a) Safe mode
b) Last Known Good Configuration
c) Directory Services Restore Mode
d) Debugging Mode
Answer: b) Last Known Good Configuration
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference: Understanding Advanced Boot Menu
Explanation: Last known good configuration starts Windows with the last registry and driver configuration that worked successfully, usually marked as the last successful logon.
- What tool do you use to help isolate a program that is giving you problems during boot-up?
a) sysinfo
b) msconfig
c) regedit
d) evtvwr
Answer: b) msconfig
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Using the System Configuration Tool
Explanation: The System Configuration (msconfig.exe) tool can help you identify problems that might prevent Windows from starting correctly. When a problem occurs, assuming you can successfully start and log on to Windows, you can open System Configuration and disable certain startup programs or services.
- What program allows you to view processor and memory utilization quickly?
a) Task Manager
b) Performance Monitor
c) System Information
d) Configuration Manager
Answer: a) Task Manager
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Understanding Performance
Explanation: Task Manager is one of the handiest programs you can use to take a quick glance at performance to see which programs are using the most system resources on your computer. You can see the status of running programs and programs that have stopped responding, and you can stop a program running in memory by using Task Manager.
- What should be the maximum consistent processor utilization?
a) 40%
b) 50%
c) 60%
d) 80%
Answer: d) 80%
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Understanding Performance
Explanation: Processor Time measures how busy the processor is. Although the processor may jump to 100% processor usage, the processor should not be above 80% most of the time. If it isn’t, you should upgrade the processor (using a faster processor or additional processors) or move some of the services to other systems.
- To protect against power fluctuations, every server should be protected by _______.
a) RAID
b) UPS
c) Teamed NICs
d) APM
Answer: b) UPS
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Introducing Fault-Tolerant Components
Explanation: An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is an electrical device consisting of one or more batteries to provide backup power when a power outage occurs.
- The best method to data recovery is __________.
a) backup
b) DFS
c) RAID
d) spare drives
Answer: a) backup
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Understanding Backups
Explanation: A backup, or the process of backing up, refers to making copies of data so that these copies can be used to restore the original after a data-loss event. They can be used to restore entire systems following a disaster or to restore small file sets that were accidentally deleted or corrupted. The best method for data recovery is back up, back up, back up!
- Which type of backup backs up only new and recently changed files since the last backup?
a) full backup
b) incremental backup
c) differential backup
d) copy backup
Answer: b) incremental backup
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Understanding Backups
Explanation: Full backups with incremental backups start with a full backup followed by several incremental backups. For example, once a week, you would perform a full backup on Friday night, which shuts off the archive attribute indicating that the files were backed up. Then any new files or changed files would have the archive attribute turned on. You would then perform an incremental backup Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, which only backs up new and changed files and shuts off the archive attribute.
- What program is used to fix a system that no longer boots running Windows Server 2003 R2?
a) Recovery console
b) Repair Center
c) bcdedit
d) DISM
Answer: a) Recovery console
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Performing Server Repair
Explanation: For computers running Windows Server 2003, you can use the Recovery console, a command-line tool that you can use to repair Windows if the computer does not start correctly. You start the Recovery console from the Windows Server 2003 CD, or at startup through the startup menu if you previously installed the Recovery console on the computer.
- In Windows Server 2008, what would you use instead of Recovery console?
a) Windows Backups
b) Shadow copies
c) Windows PE
d) Windows Fix tool
Answer: c) Windows PE
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference: Performing Server Repair
Explanation: For Windows Server 2008, you would use the WinPE disk instead of the Recovery console. Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 3.0 is a minimal Win32 operating system with limited services, built on the Windows 7 kernel.