Windows admin interview questions (includes Vista)

1. What is Active Directory?

2. What is LDAP?
3. Can you connect Active Directory to other 3rd-party Directory Services? Name a few
options.
4. Where is the AD database held? What other folders are related to AD?
5. What is the SYSVOL folder?
6. Name the AD NCs and replication issues for each NC
7. What are application partitions? When do I use them
8. How do you create a new application partition
9. How do you view replication properties for AD partitions and DCs?
10. What is the Global Catalog?

11. How do you view all the GCs in the forest?

12. Why not make all DCs in a large forest as GCs?
13. Trying to look at the Schema, how can I do that?
14. What are the Support Tools? Why do I need them?
15. What is LDP? What is REPLMON? What is ADSIEDIT? What is NETDOM? What
is REPADMIN?
16. What are sites? What are they used for?
17. What’s the difference between a site link’s schedule and interval?
18. What is the KCC?
19. What is the ISTG? Who has that role by default?
20. What are the requirements for installing AD on a new server?
21. What can you do to promote a server to DC if you’re in a remote location with slow
WAN link?
22. How can you forcibly remove AD from a server, and what do you do later? • Can I
get user passwords from the AD database?
23. What tool would I use to try to grab security related packets from the wire?
24. Name some OU design considerations.
25. What is tombstone lifetime attribute?
26. What do you do to install a new Windows 2003 DC in a Windows 2000 AD?
27. What do you do to install a new Windows 2003 R2 DC in a Windows 2003 AD?
28. How would you find all users that have not logged on since last month?
29. What are the DS* commands?
30. What’s the difference between LDIFDE and CSVDE? Usage considerations?
31. What are the FSMO roles? Who has them by default? What happens when each one
fails?
32. What FSMO placement considerations do you know of?
33. I want to look at the RID allocation table for a DC. What do I do?
34. What’s the difference between transferring a FSMO role and seizing one? Which
one should you NOT seize? Why?
35. How do you configure a “stand-by operation master” for any of the roles?
36. How do you backup AD?
37. How do you restore AD?
 38. How do you change the DS Restore admin password?
39. Why can’t you restore a DC that was backed up 4 months ago?
40. What are GPOs?
41. What is the order in which GPOs are applied?
42. Name a few benefits of using GPMC.
43. What are the GPC and the GPT? Where can I find them?
44. What are GPO links? What special things can I do to them?
45. What can I do to prevent inheritance from above?
46. How can I override blocking of inheritance?
47. How can you determine what GPO was and was not applied for a user? Name a few
ways to do that.
48. 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?
49. Name a few differences in Vista GPOs
50. Name some GPO settings in the computer and user parts.
51. What are administrative templates?
52. What’s the difference between software publishing and assigning?
53. Can I deploy non-MSI software with GPO?
54. 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?

Networking questions

1. What is a default gateway? - The exit-point from one network and entry-way into
another network, often the router of the network.
2. How do you set a default route on an IOS Cisco router? - ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0
x.x.x.x [where x.x.x.x represents the destination address]
3. What is the difference between a domain local group and a global group? - Domain
local groups grant permissions to objects within the domain in which the reside. Global
groups contain grant permissions tree or forest wide for any objects within the Active
Directory.
4. What is LDAP used for? - LDAP is a set of protocol used for providing access to
information directories.
5. What tool have you used to create and analyze packet captures? - Network Monitor
in Win2K / Win2K3, Ethereal in Linux, OptiView Series II (by Fluke Networks).
6. How does HSRP work?
7. What is the significance of the IP address 255.255.255.255? - The limited broadcast
address is utilized when an IP node must perform a one-to-everyone delivery on the local
network but the network ID is unknown.

Windows sysadmin interview questions

1. What is Active Directory schema?

2. What are the domain functional level in Windows Server 2003?
3. What are the forest functional level in Windows Server 2003?
 4. What is global catalog server?
5. How we can raise domain functional & forest functional level in Windows Server
2003?

6. Which is the deafult protocol used in directory services?

7. What is IPv6?
8. What is the default domain functional level in Windows Server 2003?
9. What are the physical & logical components of ADS
10. In which domain functional level, we can rename domain name?
11. What is multimaster replication?
12. What is a site?
13. Which is the command used to remove active directory from a domain controler?
14. How we can create console, which contain schema?
15. What is trust?
16. What is the file that’s responsible for keep all Active Directory database?

Network engineer interview questions

1. User(s) are complaining of delays when using the network. What would you do?
2. What are some of the problems associated with operating a switched LAN?
3. Name some of the ways of combining TCP/IP traffic and SNA traffic over the
same link.
4. What sort of cabling is suitable for Fast Ethernet protocols?
5. What is a Class D IP address?
6. Why do I sometimes lose a server’s address when using more than one server?
7. What is Firewall?
8. How do I monitor the activity of sockets?
9. How would I put my socket in non-blocking mode?
10. What are RAW sockets?
11. What is the role of TCP protocol and IP protocol.
12. What is UDP?
13. How can I make my server a daemon?
14. How should I choose a port number for my server?
15. Layers in TCP/IP
16. How can I be sure that a UDP message is received?
17. How to get IP header of a UDP message
18. Writing UDP/SOCK_DGRAM applications
19. How many bytes in an IPX network address?
20. What is the difference between MUTEX and Semaphore?
21. What is priority inversion?
22. Different Solutions to dining philosophers problem.
23. What is a message queue?
24. Questions on Shared Memory.
25. What is DHCP?
26. Working of ping, telnet, gopher.
27. Can I connect two computers to internet using same line ?

Network administrator interview questions

1. What is the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 in the OSI model?
2. What is the difference between a hub, switch, and router?
3. What is a VLAN?
4. What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
5. How do you distinguish a DNS problem from a network problem?
6. What is a runt, Giant, and collision?
7. What is a broadcast storm?
8. What is the purpose of VRRP?
9. What is a VPN?
10. What information about a peer would I need to establish a VPN?
11. What is a full-class C in CIDR notation?
12. What is a default route?
13. What is a metric?
14. What is a MAC address?
15. What is ARP/RARP?
16. Describe a TCP connection sequence
17. What is MTU?
18. What other TCP setting can you modify besides MTU to shorten packets?

Network engineer interview questions

OSPF

* Describe OSPF in your own words.

* OSPF areas, the purpose of having each of them
* Types of OSPF LSA, the purpose of each LSA type
* What exact LSA type you can see in different areas

* How OSPF establishes neighboor relation, what the stages are

* If OSPF router is stucked in each stage what the problem is and how to troubleshoot
it
* OSPF hierarchy in the single or multi areas. Cool OSPF behavior in broadcast and
nonbroadcast
* Draw the diagram of typical OSPF network and explain generally how it works, DR,
BDR, election, ASBR, ABR, route redistribution and summarization

STP

* How it works and the purpose

* Diff types (SSTP, MSTP, RSTP) Cisco - PVST/PVST+
 * root election
* Diff. port stages and timing for convergence
* Draw the typical diagram and explain how diff types of STP work
* What ports are blocking or forwarding
* How it works if there are topology changes

ACLs

* What are they

* Diff types
* Write an example if you want to allow and to deny…
* Well-known port numbers (DNS - 53 and etc…)

QOS

* What is that
* What is the diff b/w L2 and L3 QoS
* How it works

Network:

* Draw the typical network diagram you have to deal with

* explain how it works
* What part of it you are responsible
* firewall, what is that, how it works, how it is diff from ACLs
* What problems with the network you had had and how you solved it.
* What are the ways to troubleshoot the network, techniques, commands
* network security, ways to achieve it

Switching:

* VLANs
* STP
* How a L2 switch works with broadcast, unicast, multicast, known/unknown traffic
* VRRP, GLBP
* port monitoring and mirroring
* L3 switch, how it works
* PIM sparse and dense modes

Interview questions for network engineer

1. Describe the OSI model.

2. What is the difference between a repeater, bridge, router? Relate this to the OSI
model.
 3. Describe an Ethernet switch and where it fits into the OSI model.
4. What is a VLAN? What is an ELAN? What is the difference?
5. Relate FDDI/ATM/SONET to the OSI model.
6. Explain how to configure a host network interface (e.g. IP address, netmask,
broadcast address)?
7. Describe Ethernet packet contents: min/max size, header.
8. Describe TCP/IP and its protocols.
9. Describe ATM and what are its current advantages and disadvantages.
10. Describe SONET.
11. What are the maximum distances for CAT5 cabling?
12. Describe UDP and TCP and the differences between the two.
13. What is your current IP address? Hoiw do you find that out on different OSs?
14. Describe what a broadcast storm is.
15. Describe what a runt, a giant, and a late collision are and what causes each of them.
16. How do you distinguish a DNS problem from a network problem?
17. Describe the Bandwidth Delay problem.
18. Describe the principle of multi-layer switching.
19. Describe the purpose and basic functionality of things like HSRP, VRRP etc.