MS SQL Support resources requirement for MS Service Ops: JOB DESCRIPTION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 12. 13. 14.

Solid in Fundamentals on SQL SERVER RDBMS Good Knowledge on SQL Server Architecture. Skills on High Availability Solutions (Clustering, Log Shipping, Replication DB Mirroring, NLB etc) Advanced Knowledge on T-SQL Good knowledge and debugging skills on SP, Trigger, Views, Functions Strong fundamentals on Indexes and performance tuning Should know how to use SQL Tools like SSMS, Profiles, Tuning Advisor, SCM etc.. Good at Backup/Restores procedures, installation/upgrades Good at handling blockings and should have knowledge about running DBCC Commands Good Windows admin skills Basic network troubleshooting skills Basic production support routines including creating tickets, handling escalation and Proactive problem resolution skills Stakeholder communication

a) SQL Support resources requirement for MS Service Ops:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Good Fundamentals on RDBMS and BI Concepts Good Knowledge on SQL Server Architecture. Skills on High Availability Solutions (Clustering, Log Shipping, Replication DB Mirroring, NLB etc) Advanced Knowledge on T-SQL Good knowledge and debugging skills on SP, Trigger, Views, Functions Strong fundamentals on Indexes and performance tuning Should know how to use SQL Tools like SSMS, Profiles, Tuning Advisor, SCM etc.. Good at Backup/Restores procedures, installation/upgrades Good at handling blockings and should have knowledge about running DBCC commands Strong IIS admin skills (configuring websites) Good Windows admins skills Basic network troubleshooting skills Basic production support routines including creating tickets, handling escalation and proactive problem resolution skills 14. Stakeholder communication

Some of the Previous Qs asked by MS in past Interviews: 1. How many types of backup, recovery and restore are possible in SQL Server? 2. Suppose we have taken full back up around 1 am, transaction backup around 2 am, differential backup is planned around 3 am, we find a DB failure around 2:45 am, what will happen to the DB? How we can restore the DB? 3. What is log shipping, how log shipping would help in real time scenarios in restoring the database? 4. How you can do replication, types of replications and differences between them? 5. Have you done replication ever?

6. Define Database mirroring, what are the components of mirroring and relevance of each component, can mirror be used for reporting purpose, if witness server is not there how would it work? 7. What is quorum? 8. Database snapshot, procedure to create snapshots and suggest ways to restore a DB from different snapshots 9. What do you know about IIS Application pooling? Can you pool different .Net frameworks in one application pool? 10. What is the worker process in IIS? 11. What are all DBCC commands and how each is used?

Questions asked during couple of interviews for AIT-BI Service Ops : 1)Any 6 DBCC Commands? And uses of all the commands? 2)Database Mirroring(all modes) 3)How to failover from principle to server? 4)What if during a Log Shipping Process correct log is not transferred. How do u check if the log is right or not? What are you going to do to restore the correct Log? What are the sources for the log backups? 5)What is ACID. Explain its relevance in SQL Server 2005? 6)What is the architecture of SQL Server 2005.(Define all the components of SQL Server)? 7)What are the various modes of Database Mirroring?(High Availability, High Protection, High Performance)? 8)What are the various agents in Replication? Where do each of these agents stand(publisher end, subscriber end or distributor end)? 9)Where do each of these agents stand in Push/Pull Methods? 10)What are CUBES,OLAP Services? 11)What is significance of SSIS,SSRS? 12)What is Application Pool? 13)What is web garden? 14)What is server farming? 15)What is the difference between of Worker Process and Application pool(How does it actually work?) 16) What are the ways of identifying multiple sites on a single machine(PORT , Host Header Name ,IP) 17)What are Clustered and Non-clustered indexes? 18)How is Clustered index chosen on a specific column? 19)What is importance of Non-Clustered indexes? 20)Why should I choose indexing? 21)What is a Database Snapshot? How do u restore back to a specific time frame? (For example u have taken a DBSnapshot @ 8:00 ,second @ 8:15 ,third @8:30)..How will I take back my DB to 8:15? 22)Why do we use Database Snapshots? 23)Do I require a witness for Database Mirroring..if no., then how is the process different from DB Mirroring with a witness? 24)What are drawbacks of DB Mirroring? 25)What is importance of Log Buffer in DB Mirroring? 26)What are the different servers in Log Shipping Called?(Primary and secondary)

27)What are the steps that I need to perform(via T-Sql) to restore DB to a specific time with the help of DB Snapshot? 28)Explain everything about Log Shipping? 29)What are the various Jobs (3 jobs) involved in Log Shipping?(backup of logs, copy and paste @ shared place , reflect @destination) 30)What is clustering, What are different architectures of clustering? 31)What is active/active clustering, and other types of clustering? 32)How many nodes are required in clustering(default)? 33)What is advantage of clusters over DB Mirroring and its disadvantages? 34)What is a Quorum and its importance in DB Mirroring and clustering? 35)What are the main functions of Log Shipping? 36)What are the different types of Back-ups present? 37)Various scenarios on what u do., if u have DB intact., or u dont have ur DB intact., or u lost all Log Files..? 38)What if u have done Bulk Copying and u set the DB in Bulk Recover Mode than in Full Recovery Mode. Will you be able to recover all transactions if yes? How if No Why Not? 39)What is SSIS ? What are the various functionalities of SSIS? 40)What is OLAP and how is it different from OLTP and how do we use OLAP? 41)What are the various Analysis Services present in OLAP and also mention the importance of Reporting services present? 42)How is a Manual Failover done in DB Mirroring? What will be the state of Principle and Mirror DB when Manual Failover is being done? Will users be able to access any if yes which DB? 43)What are the various signs represented on DB while doing a Recovery or a Manual Failover? 44)Do agents in replication differ in the kind of work depending upon the mode of subscription(push/pul)?Where do each of these agents sit in these modes? 45)Where does a Merge Agent ,Log ReaderAgent and Queue Agent reside(@publisher,@subscriber@distributor)? 46)What is importance of Notification services? 47)What is importance of Windows Load Balancing? 48)How is Windows Load Balancing used? 49)What is network Load balancing., and how is it done? 50)What are Dynamic Views?(DMVS)? and their importance? 51)What is a Service Broker Agent? 52)What are different modes of Message Transfers?(Syn.,and Asyn., )When is syn. Mode preferred and when is asynchronous mode of transfer preferred? 53)What is a Notification Service? What is the importance of it? Some Questions asked during AIT-BI L3 interview for onsite requirement: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Background OLAP knowledge SAN what kind of SAN..Who manufactured SAN RAID & different configurations How do u determine the RAID configuration Which RAID config is best for high perf dB.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

What steps would u take to improve the perf of a poor running queries. What steps would u take to secure a SQL server What are the things to do to improve perf of a db that has grown substantially over a period How do u check the index?/fragmentation? What is the acceptable threshold of fragmentation before u need to defragmentation? Re-organize/rebuild which is online & offline operation Can clustered index be rebuilt online? Outside of SQL what utilities can u use to monitor SQL..What MS tool would you use ? (SQL profiler) What 4 main counters u would monitor using perf monitor To know general health of server what monitors would u look at How do u stop an SSIS package initiated from SQL job? How do u see what process are running on your SQL server? SAN cloning (any experience) What statistics are related to SQL server What are the resources for which SQL server keeps statistics on? Under what circumstances do statistics go out of date Tell about high availability solutions in SQL server Any experience in log shipping/replication Do u know what a transaction is related to SQL server Have you used SQL 2008.. are you familiar with data compression

Communications/Learning: 27. 28. 29. 30. When u running admin role how much interaction have u had to business & engineering teams? Do you lead communications? Do u communicate in technical terms? What if u have a std say a db has to be named on a particular std? how would u communicate to engg team? 31. When u work in projects do u like to look individually or in a team? 32. When u learn .. are you a visual learner or hand on? Few more Recent Questions asked in RXD

1. What is the exact data that is moving in the form of logs in log shipping? 2. Why does the log file gets full sometimes and not always when there are transactions running all the time?

3. When the server goes down what are the steps followed and which team is contacted ? 4. what is default port no for SQL Server and what are the port numbers for names instances? 5. Can we allocate resources to particular dBs, if not what is the best part to take care of imp dBs? 6. What are the prerequisites for log shipping? 7. How log shipping works and if shipping fails what you are going to do..? 8. How many Jobs run in log shipping and where they reside? 9. What DBCC commands do and some dbcc commands? 10. what are recovery models? 11. How mirroring works and different scenarios if witness fails what we can do..? 12. What is the use of Clustering and in Active Active clustering can user connect to both nodes..?
Few More Set of Qs been asked 1) Troubleshooting on Tuning---procedure, functions, indexing, fragmentation, locking , blocking, query hints, no locking, isolation level, dirty read, transactions, different type of locks and DMVs used. 2) IIS troubleshooting metabase xml configuration, application pool, worker process, 3) Connectivity troubleshooting -SQL server and IIS connectivity, RPC failed. 4) Difference between Replication and mirroring and types. 5) SQL Server 2005 and 2008 difference 6) SQL server default databases which gets created after installation. 7) Index types and importance and implementation (clustered and non clustered) 8) Procedure tuning 9) Database compression (shrink) 10) Primary key, unique key and foreign key difference 11) Database normalization 12) Difference between mirroring and replication. 13) DMVs

14) 15) 16) 17) 18) 19)

SQL Profiler and Perfmon Hardware up-gradation Backups and recovery Overall Support process(L2 and L3) Troubleshooting methodologies Basic idea on a CRM tool(siebel)

MS Qs of XIT :

1. When you create a database 2 user stored procedures should be created. What you will do 2. What is the default size of database can we change default database size. 3. What is Normalization difference between 3NF and 4NF 4. How will you decide granularity level when you are designing a database 5. Procedure is taking 5 mints to execute in Production server and 1 min in UAT what might be the reason 6. Clustered and non-clustered indexes can we create non-clustered indexes without clustered index 7. There are 5 instances and 1 database in each and 5 applications for each instance I have to move all databases into one instance what are the considerations 8. What is database mirroring? Different modes in database mirroring. 9. What is Transaction log shipping . 10. If I have to setup a reporting server which type of high availability technique I have to use so that the latency is minimum. 11. What is IIS 12. What are application pools 13. If one set of users are able to access the application and another set of users are getting service unavailable error message what might be the reason. 14. What is NLB
Qs on BI Domain :

1. What is SSIS? 2. Where is SSIS package stored can we store in file format if so what is extension 3. What is SSAS?

4. What are cubes, fact tables, dimension tables? 5. How to take back up of OLAP DB 6. What is maintenance plan 7. Tell me any 5 DMVs 8. Tell me any 6 DBCC commands 9. When to reorganize and when to reindex indexes. 10. What is locking\blocking 11. ACID properties 12. Tell me about locks? 13. What is deadlock? 14. What are joins? Tell me about left outer join and right outer join. 15. Tell me about database mirroring and modes 16. How database mirroring is functioning 17. Active-Active clustering 18. If we have Site A and Site B connected through a WAN Site A data to be replicated to Site B which type of replication you choose and why? 19. In transaction replication If I update in subscriber will it reflect in publisher 20. Can I setup transaction replication for the table which is not having primary key. 21. What is application pool 22. Where websites are created? 23. If I have 2 website google.com, bing.com hosted on same IIS server .How the IIS server identifies which website is requested. 24. If I have taken full back up at 9pm and transaction log backups scheduled for every 1 hr. and differential backup scheduled for every 3 hrs. If my database crashes at 4:20 am how will you recover to 4:15 am. 25. How will you improve performance of a query. 26. What is tracer token.
Questions discussed with Venkatesh. 1.What are your daily tasks as a DBA. 2.If you are unable to login in to SQL Server .You checked in error logs it says Unable to open Master.mdf what will you do? 3.Difference between log shipping and mirroring.

4.How will you find long running queries. 5. If the transaction log grows ? what u will do in worst case ? 6.How will you improve performance of a query. 7.How merge replication works. 8.What is blocking and how will you find blocking? Additional Qs been asked:

1. How many types of backup, recovery and restore are possible in SQL Server? 2. Suppose we have taken full backup around 1 am, transaction backup around 2 am, differential backup is planned around 3 am, we find a DB failure around 2:45 am, what will happen to the DB? How we can restore the DB? 3. What is log shipping, how log shipping would help in real time scenarios in restoring the database? 4. How you can do replication, types of replications and differences between them? 5. Have you done replication ever? 6. What do you mean by DB clustering, types of clustering? 7. Define Database mirroring, what are the components of mirroring and relevance of each component, can mirror be used for reporting purpose, if witness server is not there how would it work? 8. What is quorum? 9. What is service broker? 10. Database snapshot, procedure to create snapshopts and suggest ways to restore a DB from different snapshots 11. What is CDT? 12. What do you know about IIS Application pooling? Can you pool different .Net frameworks in one application pool? 13. What is the worker process in IIS? 14. What is Metabase? 15. What are all DBCC commands and how each is used? 16. What are the clustered and non-clustered index? What are the differences and the dependencies? 17. How would you do performance tuning, give me a scenario where you have done it? 18. Have you used SQL Profiler and how do you troubleshoot using SQL profiler? 19. What is execution plan and how to use it? 20. What is a cube, fact and dimensions? 21. Do you know about SSAS and SSRS? 22. Deployment and scheduling of DTS packages how to do it? 23. What is Blocking and deadlock in SQL Server?

Few more Qs been asked by MS in past :

1.Tell me about ur self and ur past experience(on what concepts u worked) in previous company. 2.what is default port no for SQL Server and can we change the port no and how to change. 3.Can we allocate CPU resources to instances in Sql Server. 4.What are the prerequisites for log shipping 5.How log shipping works and if shipping fails what you are going to do..? 6.How many Jobs run in log shipping and where they reside. 7.What you are going to do if a transaction log file is full. 8.If any performance issue like slow responses then what steps you take? 9.What is index?Types of indexes and explain them. 10.What is Fragmentation?Some of DBCC and DMV Commands to find out.Explain about Rebuild and Reorg. 11.What is Database Mirroring?what are the modes we use in mirroring. 12.Difference between Log shipping and Database Mirroring. 13.What DBCC commands do and some dbcc commands that you use daily. 14.what are recovery models.Difference between Bulk logged and Full Recovery model? 15.What is Replication?Types. Explain about all the Replications 16.What recovery model we use for Transactional Replication? 17.What are the Tables that are created in Merge Replication? 18.What are the types of Clusters in Clustering and explain about them. And which is the best. 19.What is Quorum in Clustering. 20.What are the System databases and explain about them.

Additional Qs been asked by MS 1. 2. ACID Properties.(difference between Atomicity and Consistency) How many Isolation levels are present. What are they and where are

3. How does log shipping work ?What are the jobs associated with log shipping they configured? 4.

In log shipping ,If restore job is giving an error as "it is too early to restore the log backup " then what could be the possible reasons and how to troubleshoot this issue. How to trouble shoot if any of the log backup file is missing ? How does replication work ? How does transactional replication work? what are the agents associated with it. How does transactional replication with updating subscriber work. Agents associated with it. How mirroring works. Its operating modes .(High availability, High Protection and High Performance)

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. What are joins and cursor. 11. Any 5 DBCC command. 12. Commonly used DMVs. 13. Name few Daily maintenance activities you do for the database instance. 14. How to check index fragmentation .when is rebuild and reorg indexes used. 15. What is the use of Tail log backup .How to take the tail log backup.(syntax) 16. explain about SSIS, SSAS. 17. What is meant by OLAP services. 18. Difference between locking and blocking .how to troubleshoot them. 19. How do you troubleshoot if the response of an instance had become slow. 20. How many NIC cards are present in a 2 node cluster .

21. How does failover works in clustering .How to failover resources which have dependent resources for them. 22. Difference between Active /Active and Active/Passive Cluster . 23. What is App pool. 24. what is network load balancing . 25. What is SQL Profiler . How to use it .Any real time issues where you have used Profiler.

MS BUIT- BI Candidate: Neelima 1. 2. ACID Properties.(difference between Atomicity and Consistency) How many Isolation levels are present. What are they and where are

3. How does log shipping work ?What are the jobs associated with log shipping they configured?

4. In log shipping ,If restore job is giving an error as "it is too early to restore the log backup " then what could be the possible reasons and how to troubleshoot this issue. 5. 6. 7. 8. How to trouble shoot if any of the log backup file is missing ? How does replication work ? How does transactional replication work? what are the agents associated with it. How does transactional replication with updating subscriber work. Agents associated with it.

9. How mirroring works. Its operating modes .(High availability, High Protection and High Performance) 10. What are joins and cursor. 11. Any 5 DBCC command. 12. Commonly used DMVs. 13. Name few Daily maintenance activities you do for the database instance. 14. How to check index fragmentation .when is rebuild and reorg indexes used. 15. What is the use of Tail log backup .How to take the tail log backup.(syntax)

16. explain about SSIS, SSAS. 17. What is meant by OLAP services. 18. Difference between locking and blocking .how to troubleshoot them. 19. How do you troubleshoot if the response of an instance had become slow. 20. How many NIC cards are present in a 2 node cluster . 21. How does failover works in clustering .How to failover resources which have dependent resources for them. 22. Difference between Active /Active and Active/Passive Cluster . 23. What is App pool. 24. what is network load balancing . 25. What is SQL Profiler . How to use it .Any real time issues where you have used Profiler.

Additional Interview topics:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Logshipping issues, how it works Transactional replication, Replication agents, Mirroring issues, how many modes, manual failover, Clustering Issues, what is the main uses of NIC cards Back and restore (very deep discussion) About Lock , blocking , deadlock

Candidate: RAjesh Chandan Aripaka BUIT : RXD- Sales- Siva 1.My past experience 2.Introduce yourself 3.default port number of SQL server 4.what are the types of instances 5.Does all instances uses same port in SQL server 6.can u change the port number of SQL server 7.what is index and types of indexes 8.what is fragmentation 9.what are the percentages in fragmenration 10. Questioned on rebuild and reorg- online scenarios 11.what are the types of indexes, differences between the indexes 12.what are the types of backups 13.what are the jobs at logshipping 14. How do u monitor log shipping 15. What are the jobs in logshipping 16.what do u do if a transaction log was manually deleted 17.how do u set up logshipping 18.types of clustering 19.types of modes in mirroring 20.differences between logshipping and mirroring 21.why do u do the rebuild only in offline mode 22.what is replication 23.prerequesists of clustering 24.what are prerequesits of logshipping 25.types of replication 26.agents in transaction replication 27.why do u do defragmentation 2nd round 1. What is de normalization and Where is de-normalization used, Where do you use 2. What is the size of your DB 3. What is the full size of database if taken back up 4. What are isolation levels 5. As it is a 24x7 how many years will u be with the project 6. What are indexes scenarios on indexes 7. What is IIS

8. what is deadlock, can you prevent through scripting, any real time scenario where you faced deadlock

Below are the questions asked in MOCK interview; Conducted by Anjana

1. 2. 3. 4.

In Logshipping, where is restore log file information stored? Which table? Transactional replication, Replication agents (scenarios based) Mirroring issues, how many modes, manual failover Clustering Issues, what is the main uses of NIC cards, how you remove a particular node from the cluster 5. Back and restore (Different scenarios) 6. About Lock , blocking , deadlock
Candidate: Chitra BUIT : RXD- Sales.

1. Tell me about Yourself & Past Experience 2. Default Port No for TCP / IP . How to Change that one ? 3. Instances in sql server . What are all ?? Whats the difference between them ? 4. Can we allocate Resources for Particular DB ? If yes then How ? 5. Index ? What Is the use? 6. Types of Index ? Differences ? 7. Index Fragmentation ? 8. How will you find out Fragmentation? 9. Difference between Rebuild & Re-Org? 10. Recovery Model ? Difference Between them ? 11. What is Mirroring ? 12. Modes in Mirroring ? 13. If Mirror is down at some time interval after some time automatically its up. Then how Mirror Server will act? 14. Log Shipping ? 15. How Log shipping Work ? 16. What are all the jobs? 17. If LSN Miss Match then how will you react ? 18. If any of the transaction log file is deleted Physically, then how will you troubleshoot? What will Happen ? 19. Replication? 20. Types of Replication ? 21. What are all the Agent ? Use of the Agent ? 22. What is Clustering ? Any Experience Real time in Clustering ? 23. Components of Clustering ? 24. Active / Active & Active / Passive 25. Why temp Database getting full ? 26. If temp Database is full then How you will troubleshoot ?

27. How to find log space of the Database in (%) ? 28. If the User cant able to Query a Database? Then whats the Reason ? 29. If the transaction log is full , cant able to query or cant access in database in wizard also ? Then what you will do ? 30. How to find out Blocking ? How to trouble Shoot ? 31. What IIS ? 32. Application Pool? 33. Difference Between HTML & HTMLS 34. What is SSL (Secure Socket Layer)?
Candidate: Senthil BUIT- RXD- Sales

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Default port of Sql server and how will u change it? Clustered index and non-clustered index. Log shipping (jobs) Clustering (Active/Active and Active/Passive) Temp Db is full, what u will do? System Databases and what is the purpose of these DBs. Sql Broker Application pool in IIS In mirroring, mirror server goes down what you will do. How to allocate memory for a particular DB in a server. Log shipping Vs Clustering Type of replications. Index defragmentation. When you will do Index re-build and re-org. Default instance and named instance.

Candidate: Sreeni BUIT- MBS ( CRM based)

(1).My career(schooling,college,previous companys) (2).What are the Technologies you have worked (3). OOPs concepts in depth(Polymorphism with example, virtual class, constructors, methods and their differences) (4).Dot Net framework (5). XML & HTML, How to convert, any tools you have been worked (6). what is SOAP (7). What do you know about CRM (8).how do you learn new technologies yourself (9).What do you know in SQL

General Interview based questions:

1) Troubleshooting on Tuning---procedure, functions, indexing, fragmentation, locking , blocking, query hints, no locking, isolation level, dirty read, transactions, different type of locks and DMVs used. 2) IIS troubleshooting metabase xml configuration, application pool, worker process, 3) Connectivity troubleshooting -SQL server and IIS connectivity, RPC failed. 4) Difference between Replication and mirroring and types. 5) SQL Server 2005 and 2008 difference 6) SQL server default databases which gets created after installation. 7) Index types and importance and implementation (clustered and non clustered) 8) Procedure tuning 9) Database compression (shrink) 10) Primary key, unique key and foreign key difference 11) Database normalization 12) Difference between mirroring and replication. 13) DMVs 14) SQL Profiler and Perfmon 15) Hardware up-gradation 16) Backups and recovery 17) Overall Support process(L2 and L3) 18) Troubleshooting methodologies 19) Basic idea on a CRM tool(siebel)

XIT

15. When you create a database 2 user stored procedures should be created. What you will do 16. What is the default size of database can we change default database size. 17. What is Normalization difference between 3NF and 4NF 18. How will you decide granularity level when you are designing a database 19. Procedure is taking 5 mints to execute in Production server and 1 min in UAT what might be the reason 20. Clustered and non-clustered indexes can we create non-clustered indexes without clustered index 21. There are 5 instances and 1 database in each and 5 applications for each instance I have to move all databases into one instance what are the considerations 22. What is database mirroring? Different modes in database mirroring. 23. What is Transaction log shipping . 24. If I have to setup a reporting server which type of high availability technique I have to use so that the latency is minimum. 25. What is IIS 26. What are application pools 27. If one set of users are able to access the application and another set of users are getting service unavailable error message what might be the reason. 28. What is NLB
BI

27. What is SSIS? 28. Where is SSIS package stored can we store in file format if so what is extension 29. What is SSAS? 30. What are cubes, fact tables, dimension tables? 31. How to take back up of OLAP DB 32. What is maintenance plan 33. Tell me any 5 DMVs 34. Tell me any 6 DBCC commands 35. When to reorganize and when to reindex indexes. 36. What is locking\blocking 37. ACID properties 38. Tell me about locks? 39. What is deadlock? 40. What are joins? Tell me about left outer join and right outer join. 41. Tell me about database mirroring and modes

42. How database mirroring is functioning 43. Active-Active clustering 44. If we have Site A and Site B connected through a WAN Site A data to be replicated to Site B which type of replication you choose and why? 45. In transaction replication If I update in subscriber will it reflect in publisher 46. Can I setup transaction replication for the table which is not having primary key. 47. What is application pool 48. Where websites are created? 49. If I have 2 website google.com, bing.com hosted on same IIS server .How the IIS server identifies which website is requested. 50. If I have taken full back up at 9pm and transaction log backups scheduled for every 1 hr. and differential backup scheduled for every 3 hrs. If my database crashes at 4:20 am how will you recover to 4:15 am. 51. How will you improve performance of a query. 52. What is tracer token.

Questions we discussed with venkatesh. 1.What are your daily tasks as a DBA. 2.If you are unable to login in to SQL Server .You checked in error logs it says Unable to open Master.mdf what will you do? 3.Difference between log shipping and mirroring. 4.How will you find long running queries. 5. If the transaction log grows ? what u will do in worst case ? 6.How will you improve performance of a query. 7.How merge replication works. 8.What is blocking and how will you find blocking?

Questions 1. How many types of backup, recovery and restore are possible in SQL Server? 2. Suppose we have taken full backup around 1 am, transaction backup around 2 am, differential backup is planned around 3 am, we find a DB failure around 2:45 am, what will happen to the DB? How we can restore the DB? 3. What is log shipping, how log shipping would help in real time scenarios in restoring the database? 4. How you can do replication, types of replications and differences between them? 5. Have you done replication ever? 6. What do you mean by DB clustering, types of clustering? 7. Define Database mirroring, what are the components of mirroring and relevance of each component, can mirror be used for reporting purpose, if witness server is not there how would it work? 8. What is quorum? 9. What is service broker? 10. Database snapshot, procedure to create snapshopts and suggest ways to restore a DB from different snapshots 11. What is CDT? 12. What do you know about IIS Application pooling? Can you pool different .Net frameworks in one application pool? 13. What is the worker process in IIS? 14. What is Metabase? 15. What are all DBCC commands and how each is used? 16. What are the clustered and non-clustered index? What are the differences and the dependencies? 17. How would you do performance tuning, give me a scenario where you have done it? 18. Have you used SQL Profiler and how do you troubleshoot using SQL profiler? 19. What is execution plan and how to use it? 20. What is a cube, fact and dimensions? 21. Do you know about SSAS and SSRS? 22. Deployment and scheduling of DTS packages how to do it? 23. What is Blocking and deadlock in SQL Server?

Candidate : Anjan BUIT- BI These are questions I encountered from Microsoft when had an interview with them. I think the interviewer name is Mr. Pramod Some of these questions might have already updated in our question bank.

Explain about your previous experience and your responsibilities? Mirror -----How the database mirror works? What type of modes available? When witness server is required and when is optional? When mirrored server is disconnected what is the status of principal and mirror databases? Why database mirror works only with FULL recovery mode? Is it possible for accessing mirrored database data? What is the default port# and how do you configure DB Mirror with different port#? what type of problems you have encountered? Log shipping ----------what is log shipping and how it works? how do you restore a log file manually when it failed to restore automatically in one point of time? How do you know what was last successfully restored transaction log file? Replication ---------Scenario: I have datacenter in Redmond and another datacenter in Hyderabad. I wanted to replicate data between these two datacenters then what type of Replication you will configure? (You should ask questions for getting more clarity of the requirement) Types of subscriptions? When you create pull subscription when where SQL Agent job will created? (publisher or distributor or subscriber) Which type of subscription is good and why? When you add/delete/modify article in Transactional replication then what you will do for applying these changes at subscriptions? What agents are available in Replication and what agents are participated in Transactional Replication? Differences between log shipping, mirror and replication? Cluster ------What types of cluster? and difference between them? Have you configured cluster before?

How many max cluster nodes you worked on? How do you share a folder on cluster? What is quorum drive? How do you remove a node from existing cluster? what is the advantage of installing cluster over Win 2003 vs Win 2008? what type of problems you have encountered? Backup Restore --------------Scenario: I have a backup plan like every Sunday 2pm full, Mon-Sat 6am differential and every 1hr transactional backup. How do you recover complete data if it failed on Wednesday at 9:45am? From above scenario I wanted recover till 8:45am, how do you do that? what is the largest database size ever you worked on? Have you used any third party tools or native backups? How do you recover/restore a database when it is in suspect mode? what are all database statuses? General -------How many applications and servers you are supported in your previous project? Have you worked on SQL Server 2008? What differences you found between SQL 2005 and 2008? How the indexes are working? Have you used any DBCC/DMV commands? When you find any page allocation errors then how do you resolve it? what DBCC command you will use it? What is the best way(less time) for loading huge amount of data into data warehouse table? (use table partition and load the data simultaneously) what type of security you will use for linked servers and why? How do you check and avoid deadlocks? What are Isolation levels and why?

Candidate : Vamsi Vardhan BUIT RXD- sales

Please find below are the questions in MS interview: 1.what is default port no for SQL Server and what are the port numbers for names instances. 2.Can we allocate resources to particular dBs, if not what is the best part to take care of imp dBs 3.What are the prerequisites for log shipping 4.How log shipping works and if shipping fails what you are going to do..?

5.How many Jobs run in log shipping and where they reside. 6.What DBCC commands do and some dbcc commands. 7.what are recovery models 8.How mirroring works and different scenarios if witness fails what we can do..? 9.What is the use of Clustering and in Active Active clustering can user connect to both nodes..?

Candidate: ( Lakshmi Sandhya ) BUIT - RXD Please find below are the questions in MS interview:

1.My work experience 2.Roles and responsibilities in the project 3.What is the exact data that is moving in the form of logs in log shipping 4.Why does the log file gets full sometimes and not always when there are transactions running all the time 5.When the server goes down what are the steps followed and which team is contacted as per BGIT(My previous project)

Candidate: Swathi BUIT RXD -Sales 1.How can you find out the information(faster way) when the sql server restarted..? 2. If you are not able do anything on the server what might be the reason and how you troubleshoot even if you have permissions, enough disk space and able to ping the server. 3. After the required steps taken to up the server, how can you determine sql server is up again. 4. what are the commands you usually run on daily basis(DBCC command) 5. What is difference between DBCC: showcontig and DMV :sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats commands 6.How can you find out fragmentation percentage and what are the exact columns it will show(rebuild, reorg) 7. What are the commands you run for rebuild and reorg 7.In rebuild what is online and offline(What do you mean by less business hours) 8.How can find out Blocking 9.When we execute so_who2 what are all the columns it will return

10.Using SPID how you can find out which query is running 11.If sql server agent not running, what will happen 12. If you restore the last backup with No recovery. What will happen and how you troubleshoot 13. If the backup is running suddenly it got failed, so what might be the reason and how you troubleshoot 14. While the backup is running the network got down how you trouble shoot to take the backup 15. what is full backup, differential backup, transactional log backup and while restoring why we restore last differential backup why not all the differential backups. And If we have 4 transactional log backups, will restore all the backups? or last transactional backup? What every transactional log backup have? 16. If I have fullback up every Sunday 12PM, differential backup for every 1hour which will take at Wednesday and Friday and transaction backup for every 15mins if my database crashed at Saturday 4.15PM. How you restore the backups? 17. In Replication which replication you configured and did you see any issues. 18. In Replication did you see any latency issues. 19. How you can find out latency and where did you see the option 20. Any real time experience in clustering 21. In Mirroring principal server waits for the acknowledgement from the mirror server in synchronous mode what is that exactly. How can you determine it. 22. What is checkpoint and commit in Mirroring, what is the terminology we use in mirroring. 23. Syntax for Full backup 24. What exactly snapshot database have 25. I am taking snapshot of database at 1pm and again I want to access the snapshot database again at 4pm so can refer the database which taken at 1pm. 26. What is the process to take backup manually 27. How you monitor mirroring 28. DBCC input buffer: what it will return and will it take any parameters or not 29. When we run DBCC checkdb command what are all the default DBCC commands will run 30. What exactly DBCC checkdb will return 31. What are the subscriptions in replication and where they reside 32. Tell me about yourself and your past experience 33. If your OS got down you contacted concern team, if they not responded back what you will do
34. What exactly rebuild and reorg do 35. Can we do rebuild online 36. what is the dbcc command for rebuild 37. Now a days for rebuild what we are using i.e., dbcc command or this command(alter index indexname on tablename rebuild) 38. How can you monitor log shipping 39. Where will you run this command (sp_help_log_shipping_monitor) and what will it return 40. What is index fragmentation and in which scenarios it will happen(fragmentation) 41. Asked more questions from pervious project.

Candidate: Senthil BUIT RXD- Sales 1. What kind of data you handle in your last project. 2. Size of the database and growth rate of the DB. 3. What is your backup plan for last projects. 4. Log shipping process and scenario based questions 5. Pre requites for database Mirroring . 6. How to restart the sql server in single user mode. 7. Scenario based question on ETL Process (I told ,i have exp on ELT). 8. Indexes and types 9. Advantage of indexes and scenario based questions. 10. Index defragment and its usage. 11. Update statistics. 12. DBCC Checkdb/checktable Difference. 13. Scenario based questions on DBCC Checkdb. 14. If Sa account and windows account is deleted how u should login into the DB Server. 15. Service broker. 16. When tempdb is full, what u will do? 17. Purpose of sql server agent and browser services. 18. Scenario based question on Backup

Candidate: Sonal BUIT BI 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Introduction & day to day activities How can you troubleshoot space issues Syntax of sp_helpdb Where will you use Dbcc CheckDb, DBCC ShrinkDatabase, DBCC ShrinkFile and what is the outcome of it How can you add some files to the drive If there are 2 drives having space issues E:\ having backup files and I:\ having datafiles , whats your approach how can you troubleshoot the issue of a database whose size is of 10,000MB and if you want to shrink it to 1000 MB.. is it possible? How can you modify the size of a file (Alter Database database name MODIFY FILE...etc.) How can you monitor blocks.. what are the columns you will get by sp who2 and how can you know which process is blocked and what are the other columns

10. Log files and data files, their extensions 11. How can you troubleshoot locks information 12. what issues you got while monitoring jobs and alerts 13. how can you troubleshoot issues on job errors 14. How can you change or add scheduling for jobs. 15. Questions on Maintenance plans 16. How many log files and data files we can have in a database 17. How can you add a user to data reader role 18. What are the issues you got in log shipping.. 19. what are the issues you got in mirroring 20. backup types and their extensions 21. Explain Recovery models.. 22. Suppose a job is failing with a duplicate key issue...how will you troubleshoot 23. IIS, application pool 24. Previous projects 25. Questions on ticketing tools and reporting 26. Transaction log is full, approach

Mock interview questions:-

1. What is block and how will you troubleshoot blocks(Blk By column from running Sp who2, Input_Buffer(sp) ) 2. Dead locks and troubleshooting deadlocks(sp lock and DBCC trace on 1204) 3. SQL profiler and how will you create traces? 4. What are the different event and what is RPC? 5. What are the DBCC commands you used? 6. Dbcc checkdb and what consistency information it will be giving (data level and page level)? 7. How will you troubleshoot the errors by DBCC CheckDb? 8. Tell me about dbcc showcontig and what are the information it will show(other than dbid,spid, avg fragmentation) 9. Nowadays what we are using instead of dbcc showcontig (sys.db_dm_index_physical_stats) 10. What is update statistics and what will it do(other than used for bulk operations) 11. How will you troubleshoot a slow running query which was running fast yday? (may be data is updated, solution is running update statistics) 12. What will you do if transaction log is full, r u sure taking a full backup clears all the inactive transactions? 13. What is Replication and what are the types of replication 14. What is CDC and how will it work? (change data capture) 15. Different types of backups 16. Scenario Question on backups(Sunday Full Bkup, Monday Diff Bkup, Tuesday Diff Bkup, server crash on Wednesday)

17. if I am restoring Sundays FullBkup with norecovery, mondays diffBkup with norecovery, tuesdays diffBkup with norecovery, taillog backup with recovery, will it works? (yes) 18. mirroring? 19. Differences b\w mirroring and logshipping 20. If I dont want automatic failure and still I am going for mirroring what will be the reason ? (down time will be less in mirroring) 21. What Quorum contains in mirroring ? (logfiles and config. Info) 22. Different type of clusters 23. Quorum in clusters

Candidate: Vaibhav BUIT- RXD-Sales Below are the questions asked in the interview 1.what is the default port of sql server 2.can we change the default port: 3.what will be the port for another instance on the same server 4.What is the difference between default and named instance 5.can we allocate resource (processer,ram disk space etc) to a particular database 6.What are indexes and there type 7.What was the index maintenance plan you followed in the last project 8.what is difference between reorg and rebuild 9.how to do index reorg 10.did u ever tried rebuilding the index. 11.What are different recovery models. 12.if tampdb is full what will be your approach. 13.what is log shipping ,and what are the jobs running. 14.if a log backup file is manually deleted from secondary ,what will be your approach, will log shipping will work. 15.what are the pre-requisites for log shipping 16.how mirroring works. 17.what are the modes in mirroring.

18.in synchronies mode principal is waiting for acknowledgement from mirror and suddenly the link between mirror and principal went down, what will be the impact on principal. 19.what is clustering. 20.types of clustering. 21.in 2 node active/active cluster one node went down ,what will be your approach.

Candidate: Lakshmi Sandhya Galla BUIT- RXD-Sales

Please find the interview questions below: 1. Project and Project Manager details 2. Duration in the project 3. Are you still working in the project? 4. Teams that you worked with? 5. What were the roles and responsibilites in the project? 6. What were the kind of issues that you get? 7. What were the performance issues that you have seen? 8. What were the traces that you have flagged in the SQL profiler in the project? Questions posed in depth regarding the columns in SQL Profiler.. 9. If the server was down, which team you have contacted? 10. How to take database back up? T-sql statement for back up and types of back up? 11. T-sql statement for Tail log back up and why is the command 'NO RECOVERY' and 'NO TRUNCATE'? 12. What do you mean by 'RECOVERY' and 'NO RECOVERY? 13. Truncate options with Recovery models 14. Difference between 'Commited and Un-Commited Transactions'? Are the transactions 'uncommited' with the user's intervention or is it with in the system? 15. Output of few Transactions 16. Types of locks on the above Transactions 17. What is NLB? How do you check the server status? 18. Default port for a web site ? Can different web sites be hosted on the same port? 19. What is app pool? Why do we need a App pool when we have an option to start and stop the service? 20. Clustering - were the servers in the BGIT (project) clustered or non - clustered ? Where were they hosted?

Few more Mock interview questions:-

1. Can we create clustered index with column containing null values if so what will happen in that? 2. Snap shot isolation types? 3. How to see deadlocks? What we will do when a deadlock occurs? 4. DMV For Seeing Locks and Blocks instead of sp_who2? 5. What Is Unique Index? 6. How will you optimize a query. 7. what is index seek and index scan. 8. what is the output of DBCC SHOWCONTIG (<table name>) 9. When should we rebuild and when to reorganize the index. 10. Syntax to rebuild and reorganize a index 11. what is fill factor. 12. what is merge join and hash join. 13. What is identity column 14. Is it possible to insert duplicate values into identity column. 15. how to reset the identity column. 16. What is SQL Server Failover Cluster. 17. Which one is batter Active/Active or Active/Passive. 18. How to failover cluster node. 19. how to share a folder in cluster. 20. What are the different ways to host a web application. 21. what is application pool. 22. which is the latest version of iis.

Candidate: Pavan Kumar MVNSR BUIT- BI

1. Experience Details (Application Developer, SQL DBA). Which one you thought is a challenging task? 2. Some Questions on IIS, App Pool. Configuring Web Sites and Security Setting for the Application. 3. Project Explanation and Scope of it as a DBA. 4. What is new in SQL Server 2008 to Sql Server 2005? 5. What are system Databases? Explain in detail? 6. What are recovery Models? Difference between Full and Bulk Logged?

7. What all files will be created when a new DB is created? 8. Tell me the Backup Strategy you have followed? 9. What will you do if your Log File gets full even though you have a Back Plan? If youre adding a File (Log), how are you going to do it? 10. How to add System Resources to SQL Server? 11. What is a Function, Stored Procedure? Difference between them? 12. What is a Linked Server? 13. What is meant by Multi Instanced Servers? How many Instances can we have in SQL Server (2005 and 2008)? 14. How many DBs can we have in a single Instance? 15. What is meant by configuring, managing, monitoring and troubleshooting SQL Server? 16. SQL server performance monitor, Index Tuning & SQL query analyzer for Monitoring, Developing and Tuning MS SQL Server applications. Explain each of these? 17. I have 2 instances and each instance have one DB. Now I need to have a result set of two tables from each DB? How are you going to achieve it? 18. If I 2 DBs in different environments (SQL, Oracle), How are you going to get the Result set? [Continuation to the Above Question]. 19. How are you going to react when the TempDB gets full? 20. What are the defaults Services get installed while installing SQL Server? 21. What is a SQL Agent, Job? How to run a Job multiple times in Day? 22. Explain a Scenario you faced in trouble shooting issues. What is your approach in resolving it? 23. What all columns do SP_Who2 return? Difference between SP_Who and SP_Who2? 24. How are you going to find out Dead Locks? Tell me the DMV? 25. Types of Dead Locks? 26. Some DBCC Commands (any 6)? 27. Output for DBCC CHECKDB, SHOWCONTIG. Explain in detail? 28. DMVs (any 5). Which DMV will be used to find what all Indexes are used and the Time when they are used?

29. PERFMON default counters? Explain each of them? 30. What is Mirroring? How are you going to configure Mirroring? 31. What is Log Shipping? Explain its working? 32. Can we change the DB from With No Recovery mode to Stand By mode? How? 33. Difference between Mirroring and Log Shipping and Replication? 34. Clustering and types of Clustering?

Mock interview questions posted by Anjan 1)Can we create clustered index with column containing null values if so what will happen in that? 2)Snap shot isolation types? 3)How to see deadlocks? What we will do when a deadlock occurs? 4)DMV For Seeing Locks and Blocks instead of sp_who2? 5 )What Is Unique Index?

V S Pridhvi Raj ThandraRXD Sales Interview on Mar 15, 2011. Introduce Your Self Your Activities Asked About My Application Support roles also apart from my dba roles Asked About my previous company. Asked about did I work as dba in Infosys. Asked about my previous projects and clients Asked what was I working on that projects

1. What is log shipping and what happens in log shipping? 2. Does the transaction log files size vary from log to log? 3. What happens to the Log files that are copied to the secondary server after they are restored? 4. If you have big transaction log file saving what u will do scenario wise? 5. What will u do when primary server is down in log shipping? 6. Do u know alias (log shipping)? 7. What is resource dB? 8. What will u do when master database fails?

9. What is cte? 10. What is the default isolation level? What all isolation levels available? 11. What are two types of isolation levels in Read Committed? 12. What did u done on application support? 13. What is NLB? 14. What is HLB? 15. Did u worked on replication? 16. Did u worked on clustering? 17. What is A-A clustering? 18. What is service broker? 19. Have you worked on sql 2008? 20. What are the top 5 additional features in sql 2008? 21. Have used sp_configure? 22. If a user says if a query on a Read- Only database which is working fine yesterday not working fine today what will u do? 23. On Above question no blocks, no active transactions, space also available? 24. What is Execution plan? 25. What kind of requests you used to do previously (application wise and dba wise)?

Domain-BI Candidate-sampath

about yourself indexes isolation levels and role of dirty pages, phantom reads, repeatable reads in snapshot isolation level logshipping, monitoring and troubleshooting mirroring, monitoring and troubleshooting clustering, differences between windows and sql clustering long discussion about ssis about ssas IIS app pool database maintenance activities and your roles. backup strategy---9:00pm full backup, every 3 hrs diff backup--12am,3am,1am, tlog every hour, db corrupted at 4:20am discussed with related teams and trying to get data, so need to restore at 4:20 and to avoid database corruption tail log backup syntax backup cubes and troubleshooting profilers and practical scenario dmvs and their uses, where dmvs are stored and will we use msdb to run these dmvs. dbcc commands and what happens in these commands third party tool backups failure scenarios for log shipping, mirroring, replication and clustering and how did u resolve them. Reindexing scenarios u faced and diff between reindex, reorg, rebuild. nlb process how to differentiate websites in IIS locks, blocks and deadlocks and relate them How to find locks, blocks using dmvs. Acid properties and there relation with other environment databases. Automatic and manual failovers in mirroring and clustering and how do u perform them.

Mock interview questions posted by Anjans recent interviews: 1. What are the steps to be followed to optimize the sql query? 2. What do you mean by a complex query? 3. What are the several steps you see in query execution plan? 4. What is Hash Match in query execution plan and what sql statement will use hash match? 5. What are table scan, index scan and index seek and there difference. 6. What are Nested loops? 7. What is a unique index? 8. Can we have duplicate values in the column in which we have created unique index? 9. What should be the recovery model of a database to be used for replication? 10. Is it possible to change the recovery model of replicated database, if yes how. 11. What are save points, and there use? 12. Difference between save point and transaction. 13. What are nested transactions and how to check the level of nesting inside the transaction? 14. What is identity property of a table, and its use. 15. How to insert a row in a table by disabling the identity (TSQL syntax). 16. How to get the value inserted in identity column, by last insert statement. 17. Difference between @@identity and @@scope identity. 18. If SQL Server is responding slow, what will be the troubleshooting steps (detail explanation) .
19. Subscription Reports 20. Cubes 21. Deploy Reports 22. Sql server performing slow --trouble shooting approach 23. How u will find which process is taking much resource 24. Nested loop 25. Hash Join 26. Merge Join 27. Book Mark Look Up 28. Table Variable 29. Temp Table 30. Cursor, Temp Table Differences 31. Derived Table Few more XIT L3 interviews:1. What is Clustered Index and Non Clustered Index? 2. What happens to Non clustered index, if the clustered index is removed from the table? 3. Define msdb, master and model db. 4. How to recover a master DB? 5. Consider a query which runs faster in Development server, but slower in production server, provided both servers has the same copy of the data

How to overcome it? 6. Various ways in troubleshooting a web application configured in more than one server if issues occurs. 7. Different types of authentication modes in IIS. 8. Difference between the authentication modes. 9. If an application is to be configured to public, which authentication mode is to be used ?

XIT L3 interviews:-

1. How many types of backup, recovery and restore are possible in SQL Server? 2. Suppose we have taken full backup around 1 am, transaction backup around 2 am, differential backup is planned around 3 am, we find a DB failure around 2:45 am, what will happen to the DB? How we can restore the DB? 3. What is log shipping, how log shipping would help in real time scenarios in restoring the database? 4. How you can do replication, types of replications and differences between them? 5. Have you done replication ever? 6. What do you mean by DB clustering, types of clustering? 7. Define Database mirroring, what are the components of mirroring and relevance of each component, can mirror be used for reporting purpose, if witness server is not there how would it work? 8. What is quorum? 9. What is service broker? 10. Database snapshot, procedure to create snapshopts and suggest ways to restore a DB from different snapshots 11. What is CDT? 12. What do you know about IIS Application pooling? Can you pool different .Net frameworks in one application pool? 13. What is the worker process in IIS? 14. What is Metabase? 15. What are all DBCC commands and how each is used? 16. What are the clustered and non-clustered index? What are the differences and the dependencies? 17. How would you do performance tuning, give me a scenario where you have done it? 18. Have you used SQL Profiler and how do you troubleshoot using SQL profiler? 19. What is execution plan and how to use it? 20. What is a cube, fact and dimensions? 21. Do you know about SSAS and SSRS? 22. Deployment and scheduling of DTS packages how to do it? 23. What is Blocking and deadlock in SQL Server?

BUIT : XIT Service Ops Interviewer: Kannan M Candidate : Avinash

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9)

What is mirroring and very deep discussion about all the modes and scenarios? Sp_configure ( Example how do u add the resources using this ) Maximum and Minimum database size can be set to database using Sp_configure Data Parallel Processing DDP and DOP ( Using Sp_configure ) Process and Thread Listed almost 15 dmvs ( Interviewer is looking for more than those ) Replication explanation. You have 50 clients and one SQL server in your central room so, what kind of replication would you use. a) In this same question if 4 clients are unable to reach the server what are your steps b) If they are unable to open SSMS what your approach. 10) Some real time scenarios in Replication 11) Work Experience on Windows Admin? 12) What is checkpoint process exactly and how can you see it. 13) Triggers 14) Recovery Models and differences between Full and Bulk Logged 15) Discussion about Perfmon and all its counters ( Any real time challenges you faced ) 16) What is C#.Net , ADO.Net and ASP.Net and how are they related with IIS 17) Different ways to see the port number of SQL server ( not satisfied with configuration manager and properties , he is looking for some T-SQL statements ) 18) Deep discussion of System Databases ( cases in starting/re-starting of Sql server )

BUIT : RXD-Platform Interviewer: Ambarish Candidate : V.S. Prudvi Raj

Tell me About Your Self. Do you know job profile and what you have to do? Your resume tells that you want to be an architect why you want to work in app support? Do you know clustering? What Is clustering? If an sql instance fails in clustering will the fail over occurs? Clustering is done at what level? What all are monitored in clustering for failover? Where do you find Sql server logs? Can you change the location of them? Where do you find IIs Logs? Can you change the location of it? In sql server the log file is filling up and there is only 100 mb space remaining on drive. What is Your approach? (The below questions came after I explained what all the reasons the log file getting full) 1. In the above scenario in logshipping configured and even backup job running fine. What can u do? 2. In the above scenario if logreader agent fails your approach? 3. If its still working and facing how will you trouble shoot? 4. In the above scenario for open transactions what is your approach? 5. What is alternative for sp_who2 in sql 2005? 6. In Dbcc Shrinkdb and shrink file which will do logical shrinking and which will do physical shrinking? A user reported that he is not able to access the site. What is your Approach? Do you know authentication and authorization?

XIT- Suhasde Interview Questions -----------------------------------------------1.ACID Properties. => Atomicity Consistancy Isolation Durability 2.Isolation Levels. =>Read-committed Read-uncommitted 3.User updates a record with nolock in read committed isolation level. what another user will be able to see? => The updated info.(No Lock is used) 4.Clustered and Non Clustered Indexes. 5.Client wants to develop a High-Availability technique for a data base. How will you approach?(How will you decide which H-A technique you will configure?) =>1.Need to ask the client what is the maximum downtime affordable? 2.Need to ask the client if the other database is used for reporting purpose or not. 3.Need to check if the tables have primary key defined on them etc. 6.User says he have a critical database, What Back-up and Recovery strategy would you design? The max data loss you can afford is 10min. The max down time is 1 hr. =>Full backup Twice a week. Differential backup every 3 hrs. Transactional backup every 10 min. 7.Comparision between Mirroring and Replication. 8.User says he is not able to connect to a server. How will you troubleshoot? => Check if he have access to the server. Check if he is able to connect to the server from any other machine Ping the server if the server is up. 9.What is Durability? => The ability to recover the committed transaction updates in case of any system failure. 10.How do you identify deadlock? => Trace 1204-> For sql server 2000 Trace 1222-> for sql server 2005

11.Where is this deeadlock info stored? => Error log. Diff btw lock and deadlock Locking When Index rebuild(online) command is given what lock will happen. Diff btw Clustered index and non clustered index Will dropping a clustered index also drop a non-clustered index Users complaining tempdb is full regularly.. What are the permanent solutions trn log backup is failing----Reasons?

BUIT : XIT Service Ops Interviewer: Kannan M Candidate : Vaibhav

1. What is mirroring and how it works? 2. Will you be able to query mirror database? 3. What is the use of log reader agent in replication? 4. You have applied a new patch on sql server 2005, now the services are not starting, what may be the reason and how to troubleshoot. 5. There are 50 users connected to your server using SSMS,5 of them are unable to connect, what may be the reason. 6. On the server % processor is showing 100 %, how you will resolve the issue. 7. What is checkpoint and lazy writer? 8. Describe system databases. 9. What is block and deadlock, how to find deadlocks. 10. What is profiler? 11. How to find deadlock using profiler. 12. How to find the root process which is blocking others.

BUIT : XIT Service Ops 1st round Interviewer: Kannan M Candidate : Sudipta Gon

1. Sql server services are not starting, what may be the reason and how to troubleshoot. 2. There are 50 users connected to your server using SSMS,5 of them are unable to connect, what may be the reason. 3. On the server % processor is showing 100 %, how you will resolve the issue. 4. What is checkpoint and lazy writer? 5. Describe system databases. 6. If model DB is corrupted can we start SQL Server 7. What is before trigger and after trigger 8. How to set checkpoint interval 9. Discussion on sp_configure 10. If application is slow today what is your approach 11. Query tuning

BUIT : XIT Service Ops 2nd round Interviewer: Kannan M Candidate : Sudipta Gon

1. what is clustered index and non-clustered index? 2. I have 1 clustered indexes and 3 non clustered index what happen if i removed clustered index what is the impact on non-clustered index? 3. What Authentications in IIS? 4. Transaction Log is full what u will do? In case HA Concepts how it impact log-shipping? 5. Types of Trigers ? After trigger and Instead of? 6. virtual log details? 7. ACID properties in respect of Transaction Log Explain ACID property. 8. Explanation about critical parameters in sp_configure ?

BUIT : XIT Service Ops Interviewer: Kannan M Candidate : Nagabhushan

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

What is Transactional Replication? Define agents. In which side they execute? ACID properties? What is transactional log file? What is Trigger? What is the difference between after and instead of trigger? Explain System Databases? If model corrupts can we start the SQL Server? If no why? If my SQL Server is responding slow? What might be the reason? There were 100 users accessing the SQL Server yesterday. But today one of them is unable to access the server what might be the reason? 8. How to see the Blocks?