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Exam 70-450:
PRO: Designing, Optimizing and Maintaining a Database
Administrative Solution Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Published: November 12, 2008
Language(s): English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified)
Audience(s): IT Professionals
Technology: Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Type: Proctored Exam

Skills Being Measured

This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.The percentages
indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam.

Designing a SQL Server Instance and a Database Solution (14 percent)

• Design for CPU, memory, and storage capacity requirements.

o This objective may include but is not limited to: RAID, calculating table size, IO
throughput, transaction per second, data compression, non-uniform memory
access (NUMA), tempdb capacity
• Design SQL Server instances.
o This objective may include but is not limited to: instance configuration, surface
area configuration, CPU affinity, memory allocation, max degree of parallelism
(MAXDOP), collation
• Design physical database and object placement.
o This objective may include but is not limited to: heap and index placement,
filestream, data and log files, filegroups, partition placement, large object
placement, full text catalog
• Design a migration, consolidation, and upgrade strategy.
o This objective may include but is not limited to: multi-instance considerations,
SQL Server version upgrade, instance and database collation, server-level and
instance-level objects, service pack application

Designing a Database Server Security Solution (15 percent)

• Design instance authentication

o This objective may include but is not limited to: choosing authentication type,
logon triggers, regulatory requirements
• Design instance-level security configurations
o This objective may include but is not limited to: Windowsservice accounts,

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filestream, proxy, credentials, instance-level permissions, certificate and key
management, endpoint security, using SSL certificates, TCP ports
• Design database, schema, and object security paramaters
o This objective may include but is not limited to: users, roles, certificate and key
management, Service broker, Common Language Runtime (CLR), ownership
chains
• Design a security policy and an audit plan
o This objective may include but is not limited to: Policy-Based Management
Framework, security functions, sp_helprotect, catalog views, extended events,
notifications
• Design an encryption strategy
o This objective may include but is not limited to: Transparent Data Encryption,
encrypting protected data, certificate and key management, filestream

Designing a Database Solution for High Availability (15 percent)

• Design a failover clustering solution

o This objective may include but is not limited to: cluster resource group, cluster
setup considerations, number of nodes, service accounts
• Design database mirroring
o This objective may include but is not limited to: whether to use a witness server,
Windows Server considerations, suspend vs. stop, automatic or manual failover,
automatic page repair, database snapshots for reporting, managing instance-level
objects
• Design a high-availability solution that is based on replication
o This objective may include but is not limited to: different replication types,
topologies, recover from replication failure, synchronization, health monitoring
• Design a high-availability solution that is based on log shipping
o This objective may include but is not limited to: manage instance-level objects,
changing roles, reporting secondary instance for reporting, monitor server,
reinitializing, consistency check on secondary instance
• Select high-availability technologies based on business requirements
o This objective may include but is not limited to: failover clustering, database
mirroring, log shipping, replication

Designing a Backup and Recovery Solution (20 percent)

• Design a backup strategy

o This objective may include but is not limited to: recovery model, compression,
choosing backup types, scheduling, backup media, file and filegroups backup,
verifying backups, key management, mirrored backups, cluster considerations
• Design a recovery strategy
o This objective may include but is not limited to: page, file, filegroup, partial and
online restores, orphan users, instance rebuild, encryption considerations,
handling media failures, transaction logs, point in time and mark recovery,
filestreams

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• Design a recovery test plan
o This objective may include but is not limited to: log shipping, replication,
hardware considerations, scheduling a database restore test, handling high
availability failures

Designing a Monitoring Strategy (13 percent)

• Design a monitoring solution at the operating system level

o This objective may include but is not limited to: system monitor counters, event
logs, dynamic management views and functions, Windows Management
Instrumentation (WMI), remote monitoring, analyze results
• Design a monitoring solution at the instance level
o This objective may include but is not limited to: instance, database and object
monitoring, data collection, event notifications, dynamic management objects,
analyze results
• Design a solution to monitor performance and concurrency
o This objective may include but is not limited to: Dedicated Administrator
Connection (DAC), locking, blocking, deadlocks, dynamic management objects,
index utilization, tracing, analyze

Designing a Strategy to Maintain and Manage Databases (14 percent)

• Design a maintenance strategy for database servers

o This objective may include but is not limited to: rebuild for page-level
compression, index and heap maintenance, partition management, statistics
• Design a solution to govern resources
o This objective may include but is not limited to: Resource Governor (CPU,
memory, number of requests per second; resource pools, resource groups), query
governor
• Design policies by using Policy-Based Management
o This objective may include but is not limited to: designing policies and conditions
• Design a data compression strategy
o This objective may include but is not limited to: row vs. page level, update
frequency, compression ratio, compressing partitions, specific indexes
• Design a management automation strategy
o This objective may include but is not limited to: SQL Server PowerShell,
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), SQL Server Agent, event
notifications, DDL triggers

Designing a Strategy for Data Distribution (9 percent)

• Administer SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages

o This objective may include but is not limited to: design security for accessing
packages, troubleshoot and restart package, schedule package execution, deploy
packages to same or different instances
• Design a strategy to use linked servers

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o This objective may include but is not limited to: security, providers, distributed
transactions
• Design a replication strategy for data distribution

o This objective may include but is not limited to: selecting replication types,
conflict resolution, health monitoring, horizontal and vertical partitioning

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