Recently I have been a part of a few interviews and have had to prepare some IT interview questions for candidates. I thought I would post them here for future use and in case anyone wants to use them. I’m not posting answers for the questions. My method is to let the answer for a question lead to the next one, so it’s not really whether the answer was technically right, but how the question was answered.
For example: when I ask “Name three different virtualization hypervisors” you could answer the question precisely. After a precise answer I might ask, which is your favorite and why? If you answer the question “Name three different virtualization hypervisors” with a 10 minute story, I know to only ask one or no more questions if I want this interview to end soon.
The following are technical interview questions that I use. I may add more as as time goes on because technology is always changing. (Updated 9/13/2023)
Technical Questions
- What is the difference between virtual desktop and remote desktop?
- What is a hypervisor? What is a bare-metal server? Give some examples of operating systems for each.
- How does VMware vMotion work in the background?
- What is loopback address and in what sense is it useful?
- What port and protocol does DHCP use?
- Describe the concept of DHCP.
- What is HTTPS and what port does it use?
- What is the difference between VHD VHDX and VMDK?
- How would you migrate a server from on-premise infrastructure to the Azure cloud? What tools would you use? Describe that process.
- What command line program is built into Windows server core 2016 and newer to perform basic administration of the server?
- How does Veeam instant recovery work?
- What is a virtual desktop solution? Name a vendor provided virtual desktop solution and how would you set it up?
- For Veeam, what is the difference between a VBK file and a VIB file?
- What is IaaS?
- Infrastructure as a Service
- Name three different virtualization hypervisors.
- What is SaaS?
- Software as a Service
- What is PaaS?
- Platform as a Service
- What are the different models for deployment in cloud computing?
- Private, Public, Hybrid
- Name some IaaS / PaaS cloud providers.
- Microsoft Azure, GCP, Amazon AWS.
- Explain the 7 layers of Defense in Depth for IT Security
- Physical security – gates, buildings.
- Identity and access – ID badges, Least privilege model.
- Perimeter – Firewalls, Cloudflare
- Network – Network segmentation between resources.
- Compute – OS patching, anti-virus software
- Application – Up to date software, no passwords in plain text, design for security.
- Data – Databases, encryption, control access to data.
- In active directory, what is DSRM and when would it be used?
- What do you use to migrate from an on premise location to Azure?
- What is a 0-day vulnerability?
- What are the 7 benefits of Cloud Computing?
- High Availability, Security, Governance, Reliability, Predictability, Scalability, Manageability.
- How would you grab list from Active Directory in CMD line?
- Give an example of an array in PowerShell and what it is used for.
- With High Availability and Scalability, what is Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling?
- Horizontal: Scale out, automatic, add more VMs, use a load balancer.
- Vertical: Scale up, manual, increase resources on VM(s).
- How would you perform maintenance on exchange servers in a DAG?
- What are some important DNS records that have to do with MS exchange?
- What is CapEx and OpEx and how does it relate to IT / Cloud?
- CapEx, upfront investments, forecast for needs over period of years, example: buying servers.
- OpEx, cloud model, example Microsoft Azure, pay as you go or subscription based, rent, consumption based.
The next few questions are more generic and are meant to get the know the person. Anywhere there is ‘IT’, that could be replaced with your job department and the question would still apply.
Generic Interview Questions
- What are you doing to stay fresh and grow in IT?
- How do you work from home in IT? What is your day to day like?
- How do you deal with conflict when you do not agree with the IT business decision that is made by management?
- Why are you looking for a new position or leaving your current position?
- What is your dream job?
- In a fast paced, non-stop position, how will you deal with the demanding workload after 6 months?
- Tell me about the most interesting project you have worked on this year and the biggest thing you learned from it.
- What is your greatest personal accomplishment?
- What is the question we should have asked you? So, what item should we know about you or parting fact do you want to leave us with?
Hope these IT interview questions are helpful for anyone who needs some added questions or wants to prepare.
Check out my previous blog post here.
The image for the post came from Pixabay.
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