Strange interview coming up

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Like buses I wai for ages then two come at once. Yes thats right two interviews in one day and on the same day. Now the second will just be your typical interview fare but the first. Well thats gonna be interesting. Its for a 1st/2nd line role working within a recruitment consultancy. Had a long chat with the recruiter and then a about an hour later the I.T. manager called me for a chat. That went well. He asked me a few q's bout raid and some basic troubleshooting. So later that day I get an email asking me to attend the interview. Great. Also could I do some self directed research/study on citrix and terminal services. Oh and one more thing give a presentation on "The best way to configure an Exchange server 2004 hard disk array. Urm not that this represents a problem for me. What do you guys think. It does seem odd

 

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sounds like they want to know if you *know* where to find all the articles, and know-how's.

There are some great articles on the DP site which will be helpful for you.

good luck

 

Yep that'll be my dodgy touch typing lads-whoops.

 

Yep it does sound like they are testing you and how to find stuff out etc.

Good luck mate

 

Two interviews in one day. Double your pleasure, double your fun (from an old chewing gum commercial). Good luck, skulkerboyo.

 

Cheers guys. It'll be nice have an interview that doesnt feel shoddy for a change. Just not sure what format to give the presentation in. Powerpoint springs to mind but they didnt say so gonna go for verbal with minimal visual props. Plus I dont really have the time to be knockin about on powerpoint as well. Good idea or bad idea? Any of you more senior guys get is newbeys to do presentations before? Other than the topic being well researched what were you looking for?

 

i would make bullet points, personally. Good luck.

 

On the ball as always guys. First thing I established was File placement. I've now chosen my Raid. Now to bundle it all together into a lovely job getting presentation

 

TBH, what they're probably looking for with the Exchange question is for you to configure a mirrored pair for the OS and a RAID 5 array for the disks. I wouldn't expect anything too complicated - just explain what benefits you would get from configuring the server like that and you should be fine.

Providing your Citrix & TS knoweldge is OK and you're not likely to dig yourself into a hole, it might be worth your while touching on what Server 2008 will bring to the table regarding virtualisation (specifically mentioning application publishing). This will show that you are interested in current market trends, and that you realise something like this could have a major financial implication (you might pose the question about why an organisation will bother with Citrix if MS is going to be able to do natively what a lot of what many companies use Citrix for now). Of course, if you did mention it, you'd need to make sure you indicated you were aware that it wouldn't be in the initial release, but was expected in SP1

Certainly sounds like a better-than-usual interview (at least you're not likely to be sitting around matching random port numbers to services, droning on about GP inheritance and explaining what DHCP & DNS are)

Oh, wait... you did say you had two interviews, right? I guess the second one will be sitting around matching random port numbers to services, droning on about GP inheritance and explaining what DHCP & DNS are!

Good luck with both of them anyway

 

Well thats pretty much what my research has lead me too except I've opted for Raid 10. Found many good reasons for it.

Oh and thanks for the heads up on Server 08 application publishing. It'll be nice to throw them a curveball. See how up to date they are with current market trends LOL

I think I'm gonna enjoy this one

 

Only problem is... most servers don't have the hardware capability of implementing RAID 10. RAID 10 is all nice and fine for a little gaming system... but I'd not implement it on a server.

I agree with Zeb: the "standard answer" is the best in this case... RAID 1 for the OS, and RAID 5 for the data store.

 

Whilst I completely agree with you guys on that when I had my formal telephone interview with the guy who'll be interviewing me tuesday he asked me a couple of q's on Raid. Then he told me he doesnt use Raid 5 because of reliability issues. Apparently he's already implemented Raid 10 across the network. Dunno if this is true but if the presentation is on the "best" way to configure the hard disk array and if he's claiming a setup already capable then I'm sticking with Raid 10.
I also got the impression that the guy was quite showy and bearing in mind this is a position within a Recruitment consultancy. As I.T. managers go he seemed a bit of a Jack the lad. Red flag maybe?

 

Probably a bullshitter. Plenty of them about mate - RAID 10 is pointless for an organisation like a recruitment agency. RAID 5 was designed specifically FOR reliability. You would only really use RAID 10 in individual servers where the highest reliability and performance were absolutely essential - e.g. a database server hosting a mission critical LOB app. Expanding a RAID 10 configuration is costly and difficult so capacity planning becomes a nightmare. Pound to a penny 'he' didn't do anything - some HP bod came in and configured RAID 10 on a DB server - the rest are good ol' RAID 5

 

They're a bit bigger than that but still I agree Raid 10 does seem OTT.
On what I thought was gonna be the easy bit of the prep now "Terminal Services, what they are for, what they do etc and be
able to ask some intelligent questions". Can tell you what they are and tell you what they do but intelligent questions. Now thats me stumped right there LOL

Having fun though

 

Agreed Sparky. This may also mean that I can expect a very typical line of questioning from him regarding my technical knowledge although he's already used DNS. Hmm should still be interesting though. I'll let you guys know how it all goes obviously in the meantime if anyone has any devious questions I could ask him about citrix/terminal services I would be grateful. Cheers

 

We tend to use RAID10 in the Equallogic boxes we configure, but its far easier to configure when you have 16 - 64 disks to play with

a DL380 only has 6 slots (8 in the new G5s)
so you COULD do it in a modern server with 2.5" SAS drives
but its big wastage

reliability problems with Raid5? you would need to have seriously dodgy hardware to watch that go poof easily


Try to avoid power point if you can
power points are not the ideal way to get things across to technical staff
I'm not sure what your experience/confidence is with presenting and such, but a chalk and talk session is always a far better way to go, and often more relevant due to its on the fly nature