Windows admin IQ test

Question 1: The Windows OS architecture is highly modular and built on two layers. One layer is called User Mode. What is the other layer called?

Correct Answer: Kernel Mode

The Kernel Mode includes the HAL and Executive Services and is the lower layer of the modular architecture used in Windows.

Question 2: What X.500- and LDAP-based technology did Microsoft introduce into its domain structure with the release of Windows Server 2000?

Correct Answer: Active Directory

Microsoft based its domain structure off the X.500 and LDAP standards for directory services and calls it Active Directory.

Question 3: Which of the following monitors the performance of SQL, Exchange, and other Microsoft server apps?

Correct Answer: System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), formerly MOM

Microsoft Operations Manager was first released in 2000, and it has been enhanced over the years until the latest version 2005. It was then added into the System Center line of server applications and released as System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), although its primary purpose -- performance and event monitoring -- hasn't changed.

Question 4: Which company employed Ray Ozzie immediately before he came to Microsoft?

Correct Answer: Groove Networks

Ray Ozzie began his career at Data General Corp. and later worked for Lotus Development. Iris Associates, which Ozzie formed in 1984, developed Lotus Notes (sold by Lotus). Ozzie later formed Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. In June 2006, Ozzie took over the role of chief software architect from Bill Gates.

Question 5: A blast from Microsoft cert exams past: What has been the traditional method to get any Windows system to perform better (and is apparently still the method if you're running Windows Vista)?

Correct Answer: Add more RAM

While it is true, any one of the options above would enhance performance to some degree. This question harkens to the days of certification mania, which left the world with a slew of paper-MCSEs -- and a handful of real ones. Adding more RAM was a common solution for providing Windows with a performance boost.

Question 6: Originally code-named Monad, what is Microsoft's latest extensible command-line shell and scripting language?

Correct Answer: PowerShell

PowerShell is more than the future of the Windows command line; in some products, it is the present. For Exchange Server 2007, SQL 2008, and several other applications, PowerShell is the new and improved method of performing tasks through the command line. Using a set of intuitive commands called cmdlets (pronounced command-let), an administrator can accomplish anything needed with the association application.

Question 7: In The Road Ahead, Bill Gates explains the secret of binary code conversion. Assuming you were paying attention, express the 32-bit binary 11000000.10101000.00001010.00000001 in dotted-decimal formation.

Correct Answer: 192.168.10.1

It may have been a while since you had to perform binary-to-decimal calculations, but it's essential to understanding TCP/IP. Bill explains the conversion well, but once you get into subnetting, you may want to pick up a more IP-focused book.

Question 8: Windows 95 books buzzed about making changes to the Windows Registry. From an administrative perspective, which of the following will assist you to enforce registry settings, without permanently altering or "tattooing" the registry?

Correct Answer: Group Policy

Introduced with Windows 2000, Group Policy took over where System Policy Editor left off. It allows you to make registry enhancements by overlaying but not permanently altering the registry of the user's machine with the new settings.

Question 9: Which of the following Office 2007 servers provides business intelligence through dashboards, scorecards, predictive analysis, and the like?

Correct Answer: PerformancePoint Server 2007

Focused on the BI sector, PerformancePoint Server 2007 combines legacy Microsoft technology, such as Excel, SQL, and SharePoint, with recent acquisitions, notably ProClarity.

Question 10: Windows Server 2008 introduces a minimal installation option, known chiefly as "Windows without Windows." What is the official moniker of this option?

Correct Answer: Server Core

Server Core's low-maintenance installation limits Server 2008's functionality, providing a more secure environment due to a reduced attack surface and limited GUI.

Question 11: Fill in the blanks: To create a VPN in Windows NT 4.0, you would use the ____ protocol, which has been made obsolete in modern Windows VPNs through the use of the _____ protocol and IPSec.

Correct Answer: PPTP and L2TP

Older VPN tunnels were created through the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, which did not encrypt the data. More modern methods use the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol, which also does not provide encryption but instead relies on an encryption protocol.

Question 12: Windows NT was intended to be the successor of which OS, originally created by Microsoft and IBM?

Correct Answer: OS/2

Originally created by Microsoft and IBM, OS/2 was eventually carried forward by IBM when Microsoft parted ways to focus on the Windows API. Microsoft hired Dave Cutler from Digital Equipment Corp. to lead the development of Windows NT.

Question 13: To remain competitive with the online likes of Google and others, Microsoft is headed to the "cloud." What forthcoming cloud-based OS will allow Microsoft and its ISVs to develop and run Windows apps via the Web?

Correct Answer: Windows Azure

Announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference this past October, Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform will be based on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V to provide a framework for developers to create applications that run "in the cloud," giving end-users greater access to apps via the Internet.

Question 14: Which of the following companies has had a long-term relationship with Microsoft to provide remote access solutions such as MetaFrame Server, Presentation Server, and now XenApp?

Correct Answer: Citrix Systems

Microsoft and Citrix have a long-standing history that dates back to the early '90s. Citrix was given access to the Windows NT 3.51 source code to develop WinFrame. With NT 4, it licensed technology to Microsoft to create Terminal Server Edition and developed aforementioned extension products MetaFrame Server, Presentation Server, and XenApp. (Note: Microsoft has its own Terminal Server solution included with Windows Server, with 2008 being the latest version).

Question 15: Which of the following browsers is not, and has never been, an Internet Explorer competitor?

Correct Answer: Spyglass Mosaic

Back around 1995, Spyglass Mosaic was licensed by Microsoft and became the underlying basis for Internet Explorer.

Question 16: Bundled with (or downloadable for) every Windows OS since Windows 98, this tool can modify startup programs, files, and services, as well as the boot process. You won't find it in the Programs menu, however. What is the name of this menu-absent tool?

Correct Answer: MSConfig (System Configuration)

MSConfig, the System Configuration Utility, is a tool that most users are unaware of, but all administrators are. In fact, it is considered the go-to tool for a variety of features.

Question 17: Which free Windows patch management tool allows admins to deploy the latest patches to their organization with the least amount of bandwidth?

Correct Answer: Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)

Whereas Windows Update provides the client side for updating systems, WSUS is the key to not having to utilize Internet bandwidth for each and every machine you are patching. Simply set up a WSUS server to download patches once, and see to it that your clients receive their updates. Heterogeneous environments, or those that use a variety of third-party apps, however, will require additional patch management products to keep your systems current.

Question 18: Assume you have a folder on a Windows Server shared to the Everyone group as Read access. Assume also that, on the local NTFS disk, the file provides Full Control to the Everyone group. Now, if User John attempts to access that folder remotely, what will his cumulative permissions be?

Correct Answer: Read

Remember, the permissions you have coming through the share are what you will have to match up to the permissions you have on the server. If User John could log in to the server directly, he would have Full Control, but being that the share is Read (broken down as Read and Execute), those are the permissions he is confined to using if the NTFS side permits.

Question 19: Windows Small Business Server 2008 is promising a number of changes from the R2 2003 flavor of SBS. Which of the following is not a true statement regarding SBS 2008's features?

Correct Answer: Offers a much better licensing structure for companies with fewer than 20 users

If you are up on your SBS licensing, you know the controversy surrounding the new pricing structure that charges more for the server itself and less for the CALs (client access licenses). Under the new structure, smaller shops (fewer than 20 people) will not benefit. However, businesses with more than 20 users will save money over the previous licensing solutions for Small Business Server. All of the other options are correct.

Question 20: On what product did Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft?

Correct Answer: Altair BASIC

As fans of The Pirates of Silicon Valley know, Bill Gates and Paul Allen -- after reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics at Harvard University -- contacted MITS president Ed Roberts and told him they had an interpreter for his Altair 8800, which they called Altair BASIC. It was the first product the two created (completing it on the plane due to a forgotten bootstrap program) as MicroSoft.

Linux admin IQ test

Question 1: Which of the following companies has never offered its own branded version of Linux?

Correct Answer: IBM

Even SCO briefly offered its own Linux product. Big Blue, despite being an enthusiastic Linux backer, has always partnered with other distributors instead of packaging its own version of the OS.

Question 2: What is one reason why you might want to install the GRUB boot loader instead of LILO?

Correct Answer: You want to boot from a network

LILO supports a wide variety of boot configurations, but you'll need the more modern GRUB if you want to boot from a network.

Question 3: Which of the following software packages will not help you to run Windows software on a Linux system?

Correct Answer: Samba

While Samba emulates Microsoft's SMB networking protocol, it only lets Linux systems connect to Windows servers. It won't actually help you run Windows software.

Question 4: What is a "shebang"?

Correct Answer: A unique sequence of characters that indicates the start of a shell script

Short for "shell bang," shebang is a hash or pound sign (#) followed by an exclamation mark (!), known in Unix parlance as a "bang."

Question 5: Which of the following Linux distributions is least like the others?

Correct Answer: Novell Suse Linux Enterprise

CentOS, Fedora, and Oracle all base their Linux distributions on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code base. Suse follows its own path.

Question 6: Which of the following versions of the Linux kernel is likely to be the most stable on supported hardware?

Correct Answer: 2.4

In the past, odd-numbered kernels were development releases and were therefore considered unstable; kernel Version 2.7 doesn't even exist yet. Version 2.4 is the only stable production release on the list.

Question 7: What distinguishes the Gentoo Linux installation procedure from that of most other distributions?

Correct Answer: It builds most of the system from source code.

A comprehensive Gentoo system can take a long time to install because it builds custom versions of the software from your own specifications.

Question 8: Which of the following companies has not released open source Linux drivers for its graphics hardware?

Correct Answer: Nvidia

Although most of the competition has released open source drivers for at least some of their graphics chips, Nvidia has remained a staunch holdout.

Question 9: What is SELinux?

Correct Answer: A set of kernel modifications developed by the National Security Agency

If you need a hardened OS, SELinux offers security that's good enough for the U.S. government.

Question 10: Which of the following source code version control systems will you need to use if you want to contribute code to the Linux kernel?

Correct Answer: Git

Linus Torvalds created git for Linux kernel development after key contributors objected to BitKeeper's license terms.

Question 11: The current Linux kernel source tree includes approximately how many lines of C++ code?

Correct Answer: Fewer than 500,000

Besides the fact that Linux was started before good free C++ compilers were available, Linus Torvalds is no fan of C++. Standard C and assembly language make up 99.71 percent of the kernel.

Question 12: Who among the following has never contributed any source code to the Linux kernel?

Correct Answer: Richard M. Stallman

Stallman thinks the name should be GNU/Linux, because the kernel doesn't function as an OS without supporting code developed by the Free Software Foundation. But Stallman has never actually written code for the kernel itself.

Question 13: If you needed to work primarily with very large multimedia files, which of the following file systems would offer the best performance?

Correct Answer: XFS

Originally developed by Silicon Graphics, XFS offers smooth data transfer and handles large files very efficiently, either of which would be a boon to multimedia production.

Question 14: Of the following, which is the most widely used GUI windowing system among major enterprise Linux distributions?

Correct Answer: X.org

Trick question! Of the software projects listed, only X.org is a windowing system. The others are desktop environments that run on top of X.org.

Question 15: What is the main benefit of the noatime mount option for Linux file systems?

Correct Answer: It improves performance by reducing the frequency of disk writes

Normally, Linux will update the time stamp on a file every time it is accessed. With the noatimeoption, the kernel will update files only when their contents are changed.

Question 16: Which of the following virtualization technologies allows Windows virtual machines to run on a Linux system?

Correct Answer: Xen

Most of the virtualization software listed can only launch other instances of Linux. Xen can support Windows virtual machines also, provided your processor supports Intel VT or AMD-V technology.

Question 17: In Linux parlance, what is a "binary blob"?

Correct Answer: A driver that is loaded into the kernel as a binary object, for which no source code is available

The Linux community is divided over the practice of running closed source code as part of the Linux kernel, but when hardware vendors refuse to release their specifications, it's often the only option.

Question 18: Of the following Linux distributions, which does not use RPM as its primary software distribution package format?

Correct Answer: Ubuntu

Ubuntu has its roots in Debian, which has its own package format. The rest all use the format invented by Red Hat.

Question 19: Which of the following companies is among the top 10 corporate contributors to the Linux kernel, according to the Linux Foundation?

Correct Answer: Intel

All of the companies named have contributed a significant amount of code to the kernel. But of the four, Intel tops the list, having been responsible for about 4 percent of recent code changes.

Question 20: Who is Larry Ewing?

Correct Answer: The creator of "Tux the penguin," the official Linux mascot

Ewing drew the affable avian with the first version of the GIMP, back in 1996.