SK0-005 Practice Test 10 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A server hosts a database that requires nightly backups. The backup strategy uses a full backup every Sunday and differential backups on other days. On Wednesday, the server fails. Which backup sets are required to restore to the most recent state?

Accepted Answer

Last full backup and the latest differential backup. A differential backup contains all changes since the last full backup. Therefore, only the last full backup and the latest differential are needed for a restore. Incremental backups would require all incrementals since the last full, but the scenario uses differential backups.

Answer

Last full backup and all differential backups since Sunday

Answer

Last full backup only

Answer

Last full backup and all incremental backups since Sunday

Question 2

A medium-sized organization runs several critical virtual machines on a Windows Server 2019 Hyper-V host with 64 GB of RAM and two 12-core processors. One of the VMs, a database server, has been experiencing intermittent performance degradation, specifically during peak hours. The VM is configured with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of static memory. The host's overall CPU utilization rarely exceeds 40%, and memory usage is around 50%. The administrator logs into the host and checks the VM's CPU usage in Hyper-V Manager, which shows it averaging 65% with occasional spikes to 95%. However, inside the VM, Task Manager shows constant 95-100% CPU usage on all logical processors. No other VMs are reporting performance issues. The administrator needs to determine the root cause and apply a fix that does not involve adding more physical resources or rebooting the production VM during business hours. Which of the following actions should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Use Performance Monitor on the host to examine 'Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor' metrics for the VM and compare with in-guest CPU usage to identify scheduling issues. Option C is correct because comparing the host-level guest CPU metrics (which show 65% average) with the in-guest metrics (100%) reveals that the VM is being limited by its vCPU allocation, likely due to co-scheduling or contention with other VMs' vCPUs on the same physical cores. Investigating and adjusting CPU scheduling or reservation settings can alleviate this. Option A is wrong because the host's overall CPU is fine; the issue is within the VM or hypervisor scheduling. Option B is wrong because increasing vCPUs without diagnosing the bottleneck might worsen contention. Option D is wrong because increasing memory won't resolve a CPU bottleneck.

Answer

Increase the VM's memory from 16 GB to 32 GB to reduce paging and improve performance

Answer

Increase the VM's vCPU count to 8 to handle the workload and reduce contention

Answer

Check the host's overall CPU usage in Task Manager and increase the VM's vCPU count if the host has spare capacity

Question 3

A junior administrator is managing a Linux server used by a development team. The root filesystem (/) has reached 98% capacity, causing the system to slow down and some applications to fail. The server has an LVM volume group with 20 GB of free space, but the root logical volume is 50 GB with an ext4 filesystem. The administrator needs to free space quickly and safely without rebooting or adding new disks. They log in via SSH and want to identify where the large files are and then take action. There are concerns about accidentally deleting critical system files or logs that might be needed for auditing. The server has the following typical directories: /var (with logs), /home (user files), /opt (application files), /tmp. Which of the following sequences of actions is the most appropriate to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Run 'du -sh /*' to locate large directories, then examine and compress or truncate old log files in /var/log. Option A is correct because it uses 'du -sh /*' to safely identify the largest directories, then targets specific log files in /var/log that can be compressed or moved, freeing space without deleting required files. Option B is wrong because blindly removing all files in /tmp may delete needed temporary files for running applications. Option C is wrong because using 'find' with 'exec rm' is very dangerous and could delete critical files if misused. Option D is wrong because resizing the filesystem, while possible with LVM, should be considered after attempting to free space safely; also the free space in VG might be needed elsewhere.

Answer

Execute 'rm -rf /tmp/*' to clear temporary files and regain space

Answer

Use 'find / -type f -size +100M -exec rm {} \;' to delete all files larger than 100MB

Answer

Extend the root logical volume by 10 GB using 'lvextend' and then resize the filesystem with 'resize2fs'

Question 4

A corporation's backup strategy currently involves a weekly full backup every Saturday night and daily differential backups Monday through Friday. The company has a 5 TB dataset with a daily change rate of about 10%. The full backup takes 12 hours and runs into Monday morning, impacting production performance. The backup window is from 10 PM to 6 AM. The company requires faster backups that can complete within the window, and they also want an offsite copy of the backups for disaster recovery. The existing backup server has direct-attached disk storage and a tape library. The network bandwidth to the offsite location is limited to 100 Mbps. The administrator is evaluating changes to the backup methodology and infrastructure to meet these requirements. Which of the following solutions best addresses the speed and offsite requirements?

Accepted Answer

Implement a disk-to-disk-to-cloud solution using changed block tracking for daily incrementals and replication to the cloud. Option D is correct because it uses changed block tracking to perform incremental backups quickly, stores them on disk (fast), and replicates to cloud, which achieves offsite copy despite limited bandwidth by sending only changed blocks. Option A is wrong because synthetic full backups still require reading all data to synthesize, and offsite copy is not addressed. Option B is wrong because multiple tape drives increase throughput but do not directly reduce the amount of data backed up daily, and offsite tape handling is manual. Option C is wrong because daily differentials will still grow each day and may exceed the window, and offsite is not specified.

Answer

Upgrade the tape library to use multiple tape drives for parallel backups and rotate tapes offsite daily

Answer

Switch to synthetic full backups combined with incremental forever; store backups locally on disk

Answer

Continue weekly fulls but perform daily incremental backups instead of differentials; keep tapes on-site

Question 5

A server has a RAID 5 array with four drives. One drive fails and is replaced. During the rebuild, a second drive reports a media error and the rebuild fails. What should the administrator do FIRST to minimize the risk of permanent data loss?

Accepted Answer

Back up all critical data before any further rebuilding. A media error on another drive during a RAID 5 rebuild indicates that drive may also be failing. If another drive fails completely, the entire array and its data will be lost. Therefore, the immediate priority is to back up critical data before any further rebuild action. Replacing the drive or restarting the controller could trigger another rebuild, risking complete array loss. A consistency check does not address the urgency.

Answer

Run a consistency check on the array

Answer

Replace the drive that reported the media error immediately

Answer

Restart the RAID controller to reinitialize the rebuild

Question 6

A system administrator needs to apply critical security patches to a production web server that cannot be taken offline. The server runs a Linux operating system and hosts a high-availability website. The administrator wants to ensure that if the patches cause a failure, the server can be quickly rolled back to its previous state. Which of the following actions should the administrator take FIRST?

Accepted Answer

Take a snapshot of the server's virtual machine before applying patches.. Option B is correct because taking a snapshot provides a point-in-time state of the virtual machine, allowing quick rollback if the patches cause issues. Option A backs up user data but does not capture the system state needed for a full rollback. Option C is a procedural step but not the first technical action to enable recovery. Option D is reckless and provides no rollback capability.

Answer

Back up all user data to a network share.

Answer

Schedule a maintenance window and notify users of potential downtime.

Answer

Apply the patches during off-peak hours without any additional steps.

Question 7

A company runs a popular public-facing e-commerce website hosted on a farm of five Windows Server 2019 web servers behind a hardware load balancer. Recently, users have been reporting intermittent '503 Service Unavailable' errors during peak shopping hours. The administrator checks the load balancer and finds that all servers are marked as healthy with low CPU and memory usage. However, when inspecting a sample server, the administrator notices a large number of TCP connections in the TIME_WAIT state, consuming all available ephemeral ports. The application is ASP.NET based and uses IIS. The server configuration is as follows: Windows Server 2019 Standard, 4 vCPUs, 16 GB RAM, default TCP/IP settings. The administrator needs to resolve the connectivity issues without making changes to the application code or altering the network architecture. Which of the following actions should the administrator take to fix the problem PERMANENTLY?

Accepted Answer

Increase the ephemeral port range using netsh, and consider reducing the TIME_WAIT delay via registry settings.. Option A is correct because ephemeral port exhaustion is the root cause. Increasing the ephemeral port range provides more ports, and reducing TIME_WAIT delay frees them faster. Option B adds servers, which is a temporary workaround and does not prevent port exhaustion on each server. Option C requires nightly restarts, causing brief outages and not solving the underlying issue. Option D limits concurrent connections but may degrade performance and does not address port exhaustion.

Answer

Add two additional web servers to the farm to distribute the load.

Answer

Schedule a nightly restart of the IIS application pools.

Answer

Reduce the maximum number of concurrent connections in the IIS application pool settings.

Question 8

A Linux server administrator notices that the /var partition is 95% full. To free space quickly, the administrator decides to delete old log files. Which of the following commands should the administrator use to find and delete log files older than 30 days in the /var/log directory?

Accepted Answer

find /var/log -name "*.log" -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;. Option A is correct. The `find` command with `-mtime +30` locates files modified more than 30 days ago, and `-exec rm {} \;` safely deletes each file. Option B is syntactically invalid. Option C incorrectly pipes `ls` output through `grep` and then to `rm`, which does not accept piped input. Option D searches file contents for the text '30 days' rather than file age.

Answer

rm /var/log/*.log -30

Answer

ls -l /var/log/*.log | grep "30" | rm

Answer

grep -R "30 days" /var/log | xargs rm

Question 9

A junior system administrator is managing a Linux file server running CentOS 7 with logical volumes managed by LVM. The server hosts home directories for 200 users on the /dev/vg_users/lv_home logical volume, mounted at /home. Yesterday, the administrator created an LVM snapshot named home_snap_20250101 of the home logical volume using `lvcreate -L 5G -s -n home_snap_20250101 /dev/vg_users/lv_home` to prepare for a scheduled maintenance. This morning, during a misoperation, the administrator accidentally ran `rm -rf /home/user123`, permanently deleting user123's home directory and all its contents. The snapshot still exists and contains the pre-deletion state of the entire logical volume. The administrator has root access and needs to restore the /home directory to its state as of the snapshot time to recover the lost data. All users are currently logged out and the server can be briefly taken offline if needed. Which of the following procedures should the administrator follow to restore the home directory data from the snapshot with minimal impact and risk?

Accepted Answer

Verify the snapshot is intact, then unmount /home, merge the snapshot back into the original logical volume using `lvconvert --merge vg_users/home_snap_20250101`, which will roll back the /home LV to the snapshot state, then remount /home.. Option B correctly uses the LVM merge feature, which reverts the original logical volume to the snapshot state. This is the intended and efficient method for snapshot recovery, requiring only a temporary unmount. Option A manually copies data, which is time-consuming and may introduce permission issues. Option C creates a new volume unnecessarily, complicating restoration. Option D uses dd, which is risky and not a standard LVM restoration method.

Answer

Delete the current /home logical volume and create a new one from the snapshot, then restore the data using `dd if=/dev/vg_users/home_snap_20250101 of=/dev/vg_users/lv_home`.

Answer

Create a new logical volume from the snapshot using `lvconvert --splitsnapshot`, mount it, and restore only user123's directory, then update /etc/fstab to use the new volume.

Answer

Mount the snapshot volume to /mnt/snap, copy the entire contents back to /home using `cp -a /mnt/snap/* /home/`, then unmount the snapshot and remove it.

Question 10

A server has two NICs configured in a team using LACP. The server loses network connectivity when one NIC is physically disconnected, even though both links show as active in the teaming software before the failure. What is the most likely cause of the issue?

Accepted Answer

LACP is not correctly configured on the switch. For LACP to work properly, the switch must be explicitly configured to bundle the ports into a port channel. If the switch is not configured for LACP, it may not handle the failover correctly, causing a loss of connectivity when one link drops. NIC driver issues or STP are less likely to cause this specific symptom, and setting the team to Switch Independent would not use LACP.

Answer

The teaming mode is set to 'Switch Independent' instead of LACP

Answer

Spanning Tree Protocol is blocking the failover path

Answer

NIC driver version mismatch between the two adapters