SK0-005 Practice Test 11 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A storage administrator is troubleshooting a SAN-attached server that intermittently loses access to its LUNs. The Windows Server event log shows repeated 'Disk' warning events with the message that a device has been surprise-removed, and the host bus adapter logs report link resets. The SAN fabric switches show no errors, and the array reports all ports healthy. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The multipath I/O software is misconfigured, causing path thrashing between the two HBAs.. Intermittent surprise-removal events with HBA link resets on a fabric and array that both report healthy are classic symptoms of path instability at the host. A misconfigured or unsupported MPIO policy causes the host to repeatedly fail over between adapters, dropping the LUN each time it switches.

Answer

The LUN is configured with the wrong RAID level on the array.

Answer

The SAN array has a failing controller that is dropping frames on the fabric.

Answer

The zoning configuration on the fabric switches is missing the second HBA's WWPN.

Question 2

A technician is installing a new 1U server into a rack that has been in production for three years. The server arrives with a rail kit that requires the rails to be attached to the server chassis before mounting. After attaching both rails, the technician notices the server does not slide smoothly and the front of the server is not flush with the other servers in the rack. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The rails were installed on the wrong sides of the chassis, reversing the front-to-back orientation.. Rail kits are handed and oriented front-to-back; when a rail is mounted on the wrong side of the chassis, the locking tabs and mounting flanges face the wrong direction. The server can still be forced into the rack, but it binds and sits proud of the other equipment. Reversing the rails to their correct sides resolves both the sliding friction and the front-panel alignment.

Answer

The rack posts are not square, so the rail kit cannot be mounted at the correct depth.

Answer

The rail kit is designed for a different rack depth and must be extended before the server is inserted.

Answer

The server chassis is too heavy for the rail kit and is bending the rails under load.

Question 3

A system administrator is setting up a new server rack. The server has redundant power supplies. The administrator wants to ensure that the server remains operational if one power supply fails or if one power source fails. Which of the following should the administrator do?

Accepted Answer

Connect each power supply to a different PDU on separate circuits.. For redundant power supplies to be effective, they must be connected to separate power sources, such as different PDUs on different circuits. This ensures that a failure in one power path does not affect the other. Connecting both to the same PDU or circuit leaves a single point of failure.

Answer

Connect one power supply to a PDU and leave the other unplugged as a spare.

Answer

Connect both power supplies to the same PDU.

Answer

Connect both power supplies to the same circuit but different outlets.

Question 4

A financial services firm requires zero data loss in the event of a primary data center failure. They operate two data centers 50 miles apart connected by a high-bandwidth, low-latency link. Which replication method should they use to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Synchronous replication. Synchronous replication writes data to both sites before acknowledging the write to the application, ensuring zero data loss (RPO=0). Asynchronous replication (Option A) introduces a delay and can lose the latest transactions. Snapshot replication (Option C) is point-in-time and not continuous, leading to potential data loss between snapshots. Backup replication nightly (Option D) can lose up to a day's data.

Answer

Asynchronous replication every 15 minutes

Answer

Snapshot replication every hour

Answer

Backup replication nightly

Question 5

A database server hosts a critical application that requires a recovery point objective (RPO) of 4 hours. The company wants to minimize the impact on production performance during backups. Which backup strategy should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

A weekly full backup with hourly incremental backups.. Option C is correct because hourly incremental backups meet the 4-hour RPO while minimizing resource usage compared to more frequent full backups or continuous replication. Option A is wrong because differential backups grow in size and can still exceed the RPO window. Option B is wrong because nightly full backups would fail to meet the 4-hour RPO if a disaster occurs hours after the last backup. Option D is wrong because CDP with synchronous replication imposes high performance overhead and is unnecessary beyond the 4-hour RPO requirement.

Answer

Continuous data protection (CDP) with synchronous replication.

Answer

A weekly full backup with daily differential backups.

Answer

A nightly full backup.

Question 6

After a thunderstorm, a server in a remote office is reachable via remote console but has no network connectivity. The network switch port shows a steady link light, but the server's NIC shows no link light. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The NIC hardware has failed.. A lack of link light on the server's NIC while the switch has a link indicates a physical failure between the NIC and the cable, such as a damaged NIC. Option A would result in no link on the switch as well. Option B would still allow the NIC to establish link. Option D would not affect link lights.

Answer

TCP/IP stack corruption.

Answer

Switch port is administratively disabled.

Answer

Incorrect VLAN assignment on the switch port.

Question 7

A healthcare provider is reviewing its disaster recovery strategy. They have two data centers: one primary in City A and a secondary in City B, 200 miles apart. Currently, they perform daily backups that are replicated to City B each night. In the event of a primary site failure, they can fail over to City B, but there is a 4-hour RTO due to manual processes. Their new RTO target is 2 hours, with an RPO of 15 minutes. The IT team is considering various replication technologies. The provider runs a mix of Windows and Linux servers hosting electronic health records (EHR), PACS imaging, and billing applications. Their current backup scheme is a full backup each night, with transaction logs backed up every 6 hours, but these are not immediately shipped offsite. They have experienced power outages in City A, prompting the review. The IT director is concerned about data consistency and quick recovery. The secondary site currently has sufficient hardware to run all critical applications, but data is only updated nightly. The link between data centers has 100 Mbps bandwidth and 10 ms latency, and upgrading it would cost $50,000. The existing staff can script failover procedures. Which solution best meets the new RPO and RTO while staying within budget?

Accepted Answer

Implement asynchronous block-level replication with a 15-minute lag, and automate failover scripts to reduce RTO.. Asynchronous block-level replication with a 15-minute lag directly meets the RPO, and combining it with automated failover scripts can achieve the 2-hour RTO without requiring a costly bandwidth upgrade. Option B would meet the requirements but the link upgrade and synchronous replication infrastructure exceed the budget. Option C fails the RPO (4-hour backups are too infrequent) and RTO (manual failover is 4 hours). Option D uses application log shipping that is not comprehensive (misses other servers) and manual failover would not meet the RTO.

Answer

Use application-level log shipping from the primary databases to secondary with a 5-minute delay, and manually failover.

Answer

Increase backup frequency to every 4 hours and use a warm site with pre-staged hardware, keeping the manual failover process.

Answer

Upgrade the inter-site link to 1 Gbps and implement synchronous replication for all critical VMs.

Question 8

An administrator is preparing a new rack-mount server that will host a database with heavy random-read workloads. The server has four NVMe U.2 bays and two SATA bays. The administrator wants the highest possible random-read IOPS with the least latency, and the data must remain available if any single drive fails. Which of the following storage configurations should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Two NVMe drives in a RAID 1 mirror for the database, leaving the remaining NVMe and SATA bays available.. NVMe drives attached through PCIe deliver much higher random-read IOPS and lower latency than SATA SSDs, and a RAID 1 mirror lets reads be served from both members while surviving one drive failure. Using two NVMe drives in a mirror meets both the performance and redundancy goals without incurring parity overhead.

Answer

Four NVMe drives in a RAID 0 stripe to maximize throughput and IOPS for the database.

Answer

Two SATA SSDs in a RAID 1 mirror for the database, with the NVMe bays left empty for future expansion.

Answer

Three NVMe drives in a RAID 5 array with one NVMe drive left as an unassigned spare.

Question 9

A server administrator is investigating intermittent network disconnects on a production server. The server is connected to a Cisco switch with a single Cat 6a cable. The administrator runs a cable tester and finds that the cable passes all tests. However, users report that connectivity drops for a few seconds multiple times per day. The switch logs show that the port flaps (goes up and down) during these times. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The NIC is configured to allow the operating system to turn off the device to save power.. Intermittent link flapping with a known-good cable often points to NIC power management. When the operating system is allowed to turn off the NIC to save power, the link can drop and re-establish, causing the switch port to flap. Disabling this setting in the NIC's power management properties prevents the adapter from powering down and stabilizes connectivity.

Answer

The network cable is experiencing electromagnetic interference (EMI) from nearby power cables.

Answer

The switch port is configured with an incorrect speed or duplex setting, causing a mismatch.

Answer

The NIC firmware is outdated and causing the link to reset under load.

Question 10

A system administrator configures full backups on Sunday evenings and differential backups on weekdays. On Thursday morning, a disk failure occurs. Which of the following sets of backups is necessary to completely restore the server's data with the fewest number of backup files?

Accepted Answer

Sunday full and Wednesday differential. A differential backup includes all changes since the last full backup. Therefore, only the most recent differential and the last full backup are needed for a complete restore. Using Sunday's full and Wednesday's differential requires just two files, whereas incremental backups would require the full plus every incremental since. Option A (full plus all four differentials) is unnecessary. Option C references a Thursday backup that hasn't occurred yet. Option D ignores all changes since Sunday.

Answer

Sunday full only

Answer

Sunday full, Monday differential, Tuesday differential, Wednesday differential

Answer

Sunday full and Thursday differential

Question 11

A large financial services company must comply with federal regulations mandating quarterly disaster recovery tests. Their primary data center in New York hosts all trading applications, and a hot site in Chicago is maintained with real-time data replication via synchronous mirroring. During the last DR test, the IT team successfully failed over network and storage within 8 minutes, meeting the 15-minute RTO for connectivity. However, they encountered a major issue: the hot site's firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and application-level access controls were not configured to match the primary environment. The security team had to manually create firewall rules, update IDS signatures, and reconfigure access policies based on documentation, which took over 4 hours. As a result, the total system readiness exceeded 4.5 hours, causing a significant gap in trading operations. The regulatory auditor noted this deficiency and required a corrective action plan. The company must ensure that the next DR test achieves full operational readiness, including security controls, within the 15-minute RTO. The IT budget is already allocated for the current fiscal year, so large capital expenditures are not possible, but the team can leverage existing tools and automation. Which of the following is the BEST approach to address this issue?

Accepted Answer

Implement a configuration management tool that automatically synchronizes firewall rules, IDS signatures, and access controls to the hot site in near real-time.. The core issue is that security controls at the hot site were not synchronized with the primary site, causing a 4-hour manual reconfiguration that blew the 15-minute RTO. A configuration management tool that automatically synchronizes firewall rules, IDS signatures, and access controls in near real-time directly addresses this root cause by eliminating manual intervention during failover. This leverages existing tooling and automation, aligning with the budget constraint while ensuring security parity between sites.

Answer

Develop detailed runbooks for the security team to manually configure devices during failover; then conduct quarterly drills to reduce configuration time.

Answer

Re-evaluate the RTO to extend it to 4 hours and inform regulators of a realistic capability.

Answer

Replace the existing firewalls and IDS at the hot site with identical hardware from the same vendors as the primary site.

Question 12

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.. 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 13

A small business relies on a single Dell PowerEdge T340 tower server running Windows Server 2019 as its primary domain controller and file server. The server is situated in a locked, air-conditioned IT closet and is protected by an online surge protector. During a severe thunderstorm last evening, the building experienced a momentary power loss. This morning, the administrator found the server completely powered off. When the power button is pressed, the front panel diagnostic LEDs briefly illuminate, and all internal cooling fans start spinning for about two to three seconds, but then the server abruptly powers down. There are no audible beep codes, and the monitor never receives a video signal. The administrator has already verified the power cable is firmly seated in both the server and the surge protector, swapped the power cable with a known-good one, and tested the surge protector with another device, which powered on normally. No spare parts are immediately available, and server downtime must be kept to a minimum. What should the administrator do FIRST to diagnose and resolve the problem?

Accepted Answer

Replace the power supply with a compatible, known-good unit.. Option B is correct: the brief fan spin with immediate shutdown and absence of POST is a classic sign of a failing power supply that cannot maintain output under load. After a power surge, the power supply is the most probable damaged component. Option A is wrong because motherboard failure would typically produce beep codes or consistent power without POST, and swapping it is high-effort without first testing the power supply. Option C is wrong because RAM issues usually generate beep codes or a continuous power-on state with no boot, not the described brief spin-down. Option D is wrong because the administrator already confirmed other devices work on the same circuit, ruling out a supply-side issue.

Answer

Swap the motherboard with an identical one from a spare parts inventory.

Answer

Connect the server directly to a different power outlet, bypassing the surge protector.

Answer

Remove the server's RAM modules and reinstall them one at a time, testing after each.

Question 14

A junior administrator is asked to document the recovery point objective for a critical order-processing system. What does the recovery point objective define?

Accepted Answer

The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time before the failure occurred.. The recovery point objective quantifies tolerable data loss as an amount of time, which then determines how often backups or replication must occur. The recovery time objective covers outage duration, cost tolerance is a budget constraint, and a declaration of resolution is an incident-management milestone. For order processing, the objective directly drives whether continuous replication is needed.

Answer

The total cost the organization is willing to spend to recover the system after an outage.

Answer

The maximum acceptable time for the system to be unavailable after a failure.

Answer

The point in the disaster recovery plan at which the incident commander declares the disaster resolved.

Question 15

A server administrator is troubleshooting a server that has been experiencing random reboots and unexpected shutdowns. The administrator has checked the system logs and found multiple 'Machine Check Exception' (MCE) events and 'Corrected Memory Error' warnings. The server is running mission-critical applications and cannot be taken offline for extended periods. Which of the following should the administrator perform to diagnose and resolve the issue? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Update the server's BIOS and firmware to the latest versions.. Corrected memory errors and MCEs often stem from faulty RAM or outdated firmware. Running a memory diagnostic test identifies bad modules, while updating BIOS/firmware can resolve known errata and improve memory handling. These two actions directly address the root causes without unnecessary hardware changes or system reinstalls.

Answer

Disable error correction in the BIOS to prevent further errors.

Answer

Reinstall the operating system to eliminate software-related memory errors.

Answer

Replace the power supply unit with a higher-wattage model.