Data center technician Interview Questions
In today's tech-heavy world, companies rely on data centres to manage and store important data. Technicians who work in those data centres handle various tasks to ensure that the servers and hardware networks continue to operate properly. When interviewing for a data centre technician role, you might face questions about your technical skills.
Top Data Centre Technician Interview Questions & How to Answer
Here are three top data centre technician interview questions and tips on how to answer them:
Question No. 1: How do you handle pressure in your work environment?
How to answer: Working in a data centre can bring stress and pressure, so technicians need to be able to work well in this type of environment. You can describe situations in which you faced pressure and how you handled those situations calmly and professionally.
Question No. 2: What do you think is the best data centre power backup source?
How to answer: A technical question allows you to demonstrate your knowledge about data centre management and support, as well as your hard skills. Use this question to discuss what you believe to be the best power backup source for a data centre and why you consider it superior to other sources.
Question No. 3: Describe your process when learning that a server has gone down.
How to answer: A question about your process allows you to demonstrate your problem-solving skills and how you react in potentially stressful situations. When answering this question, consider a specific situation in which you faced a similar problem and how you responded. Use the STAR (situation, task, action, result) method to provide a complete picture.
Which command can test the connectivity of the host?
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ping or netstat
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ping
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ipconfig can be used to check the connection type and what kind of address your getting. Less
Name at least 10 Linux commands for diagnostics
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fdisk, top, kill, grep, dmesg, dmidecode, df, ls, chmod, mount
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Gave a list of commands as requested
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In addition to above netstat , ps -aux , journalctl, ip a , uname -a or -rms, lsblk, systemctl (status/enable/restart ..etc) Less
Using the command line, how would you view all the files in the current directory? (the only Linux-specific question the asked)
3 AnswersYou searched for any website in your browser for example "www.google.com" and you couldn't able to reach the site, then what might be the problem?
3 Answers↳
I said may be that site doesn't exist or i entered wrong domain name, my system might be wrong with my internet, and I tried so many things but the interviewer was asking what more possibilities ? I still don't know what more. Less
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Your DNS is not configured properly. Check the /etc/resolv.conf file and see the nameserver entry. ( u may set it to 8.8.8.8) Less
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First check your internet connection. If it shows yellow flag than its internet issue straight away. Check your IP address and DNS. Set your IP in DHCP . Less
As I have signed confidentiality agreement I cant share interview questions. But it was pure technical interviews and very interesting. You have to be strong professional in your occupation to get an offer.
3 Answers↳
I have answered most of the questions, but that was not enough to get an offer. I know which questions I gave wrong answers, because I checked after and improved my Knowledge Base. It is very fair interview process. Less
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I attended Google data centre interview recently. The questions were purely application oriented and they testing your expertise in the field. I don't want to reveal the questions but everything is behavioral based. When you are in this situation how u face. They asked me nearly 15 questions. 8 from AHU problem faced daily by HVAC engineer. 3 questions from chiller. 1 from cooling tower, 2 from fire escape and pre actuated pipe. 1 from water treatment. All these questions were purely experienced based and this one cannot be answered other than the expertise who opened the chiller and AHU unit. Not even 1 question in basics, all questions are higher end. Less
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Can you share what ability(ex HVAC eletrical...)be need in this position. I mean they listed a lots of qualification but what is most important? Less
What is a PDU?
2 Answers↳
Power Distribution Unit. Unfortunately I had no clue, I thought it was the power supply in a PC but just stated I was unsure. Less
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Data centers use power distribution units to supply electrical power to servers and network devices installed in racks. Larger units typically have such bells and whistles as high current capacity, power filtering, remote monitoring, remote control, and smart load balancing. Less
RAID
2 Answers↳
You can loose exactly one drive with RAID 5, if you loose more than one drive, you are not going to be able to rebuild the data. Less
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Spent more than 10 minutes on this topic alone. what is raid?how many disks do you need for each configuration? if you have 12 drives in raid 5 ,how many can fail without affecting the system? what is SMART Less
If we hired you and you were working one night all alone and a ticket came in saying there were a hundred servers offline, What would your next steps be?
2 Answers↳
I would first find out if we experienced a network outage or power outage
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Check if there is any ongoing LSE (large scale event) in the data center. LSEs happen most of the time when engineering department in a data center is working on power related equipments. Less