Technical Interview Questions - Windows Server 2008/R2 Active Directory

What is Active Directory? What is LDAP? Where is the AD database held? What other folders are related to AD? Talk about all the AD-related roles in Windows Server 2008/R2. What are the new Domain and Forest Functional Levels in Windows Server 2008/R2? What is the SYSVOL folder? What are the AD naming contexts (partitions)s and replication issues for each NC? What are application partitions? What applications or services use AD application partitions? Name a couple. How do you create a new application partition? What are the requirements for installing AD on a new server? What can you do to promote a server to DC if you're in a remote location with slow WAN link? ... How do you view replication properties for AD partitions and DCs? What is the Global Catalog? How do you view all the GCs in the forest? Why not make all DCs in a large forest as GCs? Talk about GCs and Universal Groups. Describe the time synchronization mechanism in AD. What is ADSIEDIT? What is NETDOM? What is REPADMIN? What is DCDIAG? When would you use it? ... What are sites? What are they used for? What's the difference between a site link's schedule and interval? What is the KCC? What is the ISTG? Who has that role by default? Talk about sites and GCs. Talk about sites and Exchange Server 2007/2010. ... What is GPO? Describe the way GPO is applied throughout the domain. What can you do to prevent inheritance from above? How can you override blocking of inheritance? Name some of the major changes in GPO in Windows Server 2008. What are ADM files? What replaced them in Windows Server 2008? What's the GPO repository? How do you use it? What are GPO Preferences? Which client OSs can use GPO Preferences? What are GPO Templates? What are WMI Filters? What is the concept behind GPO Filtering? How can you determine what GPO was and was not applied for a user? Name a few ways to do that.

 A user claims he did not receive a GPO, yet his user and computer accounts are in the right OU, and everyone else there gets the GPO. What will you look for? You want to standardize the desktop environments (wallpaper, My Documents, Start menu, printers etc.) on the computers in one department. How would you do that? ... What are the major changes in AD in Windows Server 2008? What are the major changes in AD in Windows Server 2008 R2? What is the AD Recycle Bin? How do you use it? What is tombstone lifetime attribute? What are AD Snapshots? How do you use them? What is Offline Domain Join? How do you use it? What are Fine-Grained Passwords? How do you use them? Talk about Restartable Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008/R2. What is this feature good for? What are the changes in auditing in Windows Server 2008/R2? ... How can you forcibly remove AD from a server, and what do you do later? Can I get user passwords from the AD database? What tool would I use to try to grab security related packets from the wire? Talk about PowerShell and AD. ... How do you backup AD? How do you restore AD? Talk about Windows Backup and AD backups. How do you change the DS Restore admin password? Why can't you restore a DC that was backed up 7 months ago? What's NTDSUTIL? When do you use it? ... What are RODCs? What are the major benefits of using RODCs? How do you install an RODC? Talk about RODCs and passwords. What is Read Only DNS? What happens when a remote site with an RODC loses connectivity to the main site? ... Talk about Server Core and AD. How do you promote a Server Core to DC? ... What are the FSMO roles? Who has them by default? What happens when each one fails? How can you tell who holds each FSMO role? Name a 2-3 of methods. What FSMO placement considerations do you know of? You want to look at the RID allocation table for a DC. What do you need to do? What's the difference between transferring a FSMO role and seizing one? Which one should you NOT seize? Why? What is presentation virtualization? Describe the benefits of using TS/RDS. Describe the drawbacks of using TS/RDS. Describe the main TS role services in Windows Server 2008.

 Describe the main RDS role services in Windows Server 2008 R2. What are the major changes between the Windows Server 2008 TS and the Windows Server 2008 R2 RDS roles in relation to Windows Server 2003 TS. ... What is the TS/RDS Session Host? What are the benefits of using 64-bit hardware and OS vs. using the 32-bit version? Describe your experience in using TS/RDS. How can you configure TS/RDS session limits? Describe a couple of methods. What is GPO Loopback Processing? How do you standardize user profiles and settings across a TS/RDS farm? What are the major drawbacks of using Roaming User Profiles? Working with Outlook on TS/RDS, what can you tell me about using cached modes? How do you install applications on a TS/RDS Session Host? Describe a couple of methods. What are the TS/RDS command line management tools? How would you achieve high availability with RD Session Hosts? What is "Virtual Machine Redirection" and when would it be used? ... Talk about TS/RDS licensing. Is there any difference in RDS licensing in Windows Server 2008 R2? What is the licensing grace period? Where would you install the RD Licensing server? Talk about small implementation and large implementation scenarios. ... What is RDS RemoteApp? Describe the benefits of using RDS RemoteApp. How do you publish a RemoteApp? What's the difference between using .RDP files and .MSI files when publishing a RemoteApp to the users' desktops? In Windows 7, it's possible to use RemoteApp in conjunction with RDS Web Access in a different manner. Can you describe this process? Needing to control which users get access to which RemoteApp. How can you do that? Describe the way RemoteApps integrate with the Windows desktop. Besides RemoteApp, what other ways or software lifecycle management solutions are you aware of? Talk about digital signatures and their relevance to RemoteApp publishing. ... What is RDS Web Access? Describe the benefits of using RDS Web Access. Talk about the implementation scenarios of RDS Web Access. Describe the process of securing RDS Web Access. How would you publish an RDS Web Access site? Can you use Web Access with other Microsoft-based solutions? Name a few. What's the alternative for using RDS Web Access? Talk about digital signatures in relation to RDS Web Access. How can you control who has access to the RDS Web Access website? What would you do in order to publish RemoteApps from multiple RD Session Hosts through one RD Web Access server? What would you do in order to publish RemoteApps from multiple RD Session Hosts through one RD Web Access server?

... What's RDS Gateway? What are the main usage scenarios for RDS Gateway? What are RAPs? What are CAPs? Describe the process of securing RDS Gateway. Talk about digital signatures in relation to RDS Gateway. What type of RD clients can be used with RD Gateway? ... What is the RD Session Broker? What was the original role of the RD Session Broker, and what where the names this role used in previous versions of Terminal Services? When would you need to implement a RD Session Broker? Talk about RD Session Broker and VDI. Talk about the entire process of using all RDS components along with RS Session Broker. How would you achieve high availability with RD Session Brokers?

Technical Interview Questions - Windows Server 2008/R2 Hyper-V and Virtualization

What is virtualization (in general)? What are the 4 major virtualization areas? Describe the major benefits of Server Virtualization. What is the difference between hosted virtualization and hypervisor-based virtualization? What's the idea behind Type 1 and Type 2 methods of virtualization? Talk briefly about the history of Microsoft-based virtualization products. What is Hyper-V? Name a few competitive products that can be compared (even roughly) with Hyper-V. What are the major differences between Hyper-V RTM and Hyper-V R2? Name some of the major differences. What are the hardware requirements for Hyper-V? How many logical CPUs does Hyper-V R2 support? How much RAM can be assigned to VMs in Hyper-V R2? What's Microsoft Hyper-V Server? Describe the process of installing Hyper-V from scratch on a brand new Dell R710 machine. ... What types of network connections does Hyper-V allow? When building a new Hyper-V host, what would your networking considerations be? Why is it important to leave one physical NIC for the host OS? Talk about MAC address ranges and potential issues with Hyper-V RTM. How was this solved in R2? ... What are the different virtual disk options in Hyper-V? When considering performance, what type 0f virtual disk would you use? What are pass-through disks? Talk about hot adding and hot removing disks in Hyper-V R2. What are VM snapshots? Talk about performance considerations and other "issues" with VM snapshots.

What's the difference between applying, deleting and reverting to snapshots? ... Describe the process of creating a new VM from scratch. Where does Hyper-V place the files and settings for VMs, by default? How do you change that? What are synthetic drivers? What are emulated drivers? When creating a new VM that'll run Windows Server 2008, what type of NIC would you create? Following the previous question, what type of NIC would you create for a WIN PE-based VM? Why? Migrating a Windows Server 2003 VM from Virtual Server 2005, what type of NIC would you need to use? Creating a new VM, what type of disk controller would you need to use for the VM's system disk? ... What are Integration Components? Talk about certain issues with hosting DCs virtually. What are "Enlightened Partitions"? What OSs are supported on Hyper-V? What types of backups can you use for VMs? Talk about performing backups of VMs and VSS. How do you export a VM? Mention a couple of methods. ... Talk about domain membership considerations for Hyper-V hosts. Where can you manage Hyper-V hosts from? What is RSAT? How would you manage Hyper-V from a Windows 7-based machine? Talk about permission issues in regards of managing Hyper-V hosts. What is AZMAN? ... Talk about the licensing benefits of Hyper-V under the various editions of Windows Server 2008. Wanting to create a failover cluster on 2 Hyper-V nodes in Windows Server 2008 R2, what edition of Windows would you prefer? Why? ... Talk about Hyper-V-based high availability. What's Quick Migration? What's Live Migration? Talk about downtime issues with Quick Migration vs. Live Migration. Talk about the steps needed to be taken in order to setup a Live Migration setup. What is CSV? Can you create a Live Migration setup without CSV? Explain. Mention a few methods for initiating a Live Migration movement of VMs between one host and another. ... How do you monitor the performance of your VMs? How do you know how much memory a specific VM uses? How do you know what's the I/O used on a Hyper-V host?

 How do you monitor the bandwidth used by a specific VM? Talk about SCVMM, SCOM, SCCM and Hyper-V. Talk about WMI and Hyper-V.