This is a new one for me!

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A recruiter rang me out of the blue on Wednesday to tell me about a Sys Admin role paying £35k. This is 3 grand a year more than what I'm currently on, and the commute would be a little bit easier, so I told them I might be interested.

They sent me over the usual gumph, e.g. asking me to go for a 'pre-interview' with them (which basically is a way of signing me onto their books), asking for two 'technical references' (who didn't necessarily have to be looking for work at the time but they would contact them 'just in case').

They also sent me a technical test from the prospective employer. Not too much of a problem with that, you might think, except for one thing: I noticed four questions on the test that mentioned 'certkiller'. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a braindump site? It certainly looks like it from viewing the site, and I'm sure I've heard the name mentioned in the same breath as TestKing.

I basically told the recruiter to stick it (without being too rude about it) as I wasn't sure I wanted to be working for a company whose staff used braindump material on a technical test!

And, although I obviously can't mention the name of the company, if I could, you wouldn't believe me anyway! The word 'famous' doesn't even BEGIN to describe them!

 

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Cryptic clue's on a postcard to...........

 

So can you tell us roughly what the questions were?

 

I could post them all here but, since some of them are obviously taken directly from braindumps, that would put me in violation of the T&Cs of the board.

Briefly, one asked what the five FSMO roles were, I had a question on Volume Shadow Copy, three relating to GPOs, two relating to Terminal Services (specifically, disconnected sessions), one on ADSI, one on scripting, one on password policies, one on disk performance/degradation, one on RAID, then there were four questions which were obviously braindump ones (since they contained the word 'certkiller' in them) - I won't repeat them here.

I also got asked what CSNW was and where I would use it (I didn't have a clue - looked it up afterwards and found out it was Client Services for Netware (Novell), which I've never supported

Then there were two more 'in depth' questions, which I've copied below, together with my answers (feel free to comment!)

Explain the pros and cons of SBS 2003.

ANSWER – SBS is, as its name suggests, a server solution for small businesses. It is appropriate for a business of around 25 users – although can scale a little higher if necessary. When purchasing SBS 2003, you also get mail & groupware features, as Exchange 2003 comes as part of the installation. In addition, SQL Server comes as part of the installation if you purchase the premier edition. This can represent a big cost-saving to small organisations, as they will only require a single server (eliminating the need for expensive additional hardware), and don’t have to purchase an email server or back-end Database solution separately. It also simplifies administration somewhat – especially with regard to backups.

However, there are downsides to this. Exchange is not suited to running on a Domain Controller and, whilst Microsoft have obviously worked through many problems to increase the reliability of such a configuration in SBS, there are still numerous unresolved issues which affect performance and stability. SBS also does not scale well – an organisation which has the potential to expand in the future may be making a cost-saving at the time by purchasing it, but might create infrastructure problems later down the line when moving to a ‘full’ Windows 2003 Server architecture.

Software Patching. When would you recommend to patch. What method and tool(s) would you use?

ANSWER – This would depend on the size of the organisation concerned. If it were a small organisation, (no more than 30 users) I would do it by hand – running MBSA to discover patching levels and applying the Windows Update client as necessary.

For a medium sized organisation I would utilise WSUS – this would enable me to set up a repository and a test machine with the current ‘standard build’ for applying updates to in a controlled manner. It would also allow me to save on potentially costly bandwidth as patches need only be downloaded once and stored on the repository server(s), being pushed out to clients at a convenient time.

For a larger organisation I would use either SMS or a third-party tool. Larger organisations tend to have much more complex patching requirements. Using SMS would allow me to maintain a regularly scheduled update regimen. I would also configure a test bed – potentially using older, decommissioned servers or using Virtual Machines to ascertain the nature of implementing patches for different servers (i.e. a patch that has no ill effects for a mail server may have catastrophic consequences when installed on a SQL Server because it makes changes to .dlls which affect communications on port 1433)

With regard to when I would recommend to patch, I would suggest caution unless a patch is marked as ‘critical’ by Microsoft. Patches installed without thought for the consequence can often have disastrous effects – witness the sense of false security when the original patch for the SQL Slammer worm was implemented – only for many organisations to discover the next day that implementing it had disastrous consequences for some Oracle DB servers. It is often worth trawling through newsgroups to see whether other users report ill effects after implementing a patch. This is especially true with Service Packs – I would recommend at least a three month waiting period before installing the latest service pack (unless it contained fixes that were mission critical to the organisation I was responsible for)

 

When companies get above a certain size it becomes easier for people with poor knowledge to hide in them.

I once met a BT database 'expert' who didn't know about character sets and locales and suchlike - and he was involved in address matching!

Harry.

 

Thanks for the info Zeb but I was really interested in was how certkiller was mentioned in the questions to make you wary. I assume it wasn't just something like "discuss the disadvantages of using Certkiller", was it more along the lines of "the following questions have been lifted from Certkiller"?

 

Baba

They were questions like you would find in an MS exam - scenario-based questions that have multiple choice answers but are more in-depth than:

What is the name of a stripe set with parity

A Mirrored
B RAID 0
C RAID 1
D RAID 5

I'm thinking something along the lines of:

You are the administrator for zebulebu.com. Your network is Windows 2003 Server, running at the Windows 2003 Functional Level. All your clients are Windows XP machines.

Your network consists of three separate subnets, all connected by routers. You have implemented a DHCP server on Subnet A. Clients on Subnet A and B can receive IP addresses from the DHCP server, but clients in Subnet C cannot. What is the most likely explanation?

A The computers are all running older versions of Windows, which cannot receive DHCP-allocted addresses

B There is no DHCP relay agent installed on the router serving Subnet C

C The previous administrator configured a registry entry on the computers to prevent them receiving DHCP broadcasts

D Windows server 2003 only supports IPv6 which, in its native state, doesn't support DHCP

Now you see what I mean - when i tell you that the questions were taken from braindumps, trust me - I KNOW they were. I only wish there were some way to prove it - if there were I might make Microsoft a little interested with the information

 

I think I see what you mean now. You said in your OP that the questions mentioned Certkiller, that's what threw me.

 

Sounds like come non IT literate grabbed them via Google and just wanted to see if you could give the correct answers.

Could be fairly innocent instead of a company filled with cert holding numpties.

I know the ones your on about too, your a technician at ******* etc.

Liam