InstantForum.NET v2.9.0SQLServerCentralhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/notifications@sqlservercentral.comSat, 18 May 2013 11:50:07 GMT20http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GilaMonster (1/7/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]GSquared (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]I dug around with a search engine a bit, and "sev3/sev4" refers to software support "severity level". There aren't standard definitions, but it appears that the higher the number, the lower the importance/impact of the incident, with 3 and 4 being, generally, stuff that barely matters or is merely affecting performance, without affecting accuracy or stopping the show. Sev1 would be a down server, a corrupt production database, crashed internet connection, and so on, that cause alarm bells to sound and people to run around and flap their arms and make chicken noises. Sev2 is stuff that affects production but isn't stopping the show. Sev5 appears to generally be things like a background color on the UI making something a little hard to read, or a font someone doesn't like (i.e., should be fixed, but when it's appropriate/convenient).[/quote]Thing is, there's no standard definitions so there's nothing stopping a particular company (like maybe the one the OP interviewed at) defining the severity levels on an ascending scale, so eg of a sev 4 would be meteor hit server room, eg of a sev 3 would be production DB down.It's the kind of thing that if asked in an interview has to be immediately followed up by 'what do you defines as a sev4 incident?'[/quote]Yep.Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:23:56 GMTGSquaredhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GSquared (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]I dug around with a search engine a bit, and "sev3/sev4" refers to software support "severity level". There aren't standard definitions, but it appears that the higher the number, the lower the importance/impact of the incident, with 3 and 4 being, generally, stuff that barely matters or is merely affecting performance, without affecting accuracy or stopping the show. Sev1 would be a down server, a corrupt production database, crashed internet connection, and so on, that cause alarm bells to sound and people to run around and flap their arms and make chicken noises. Sev2 is stuff that affects production but isn't stopping the show. Sev5 appears to generally be things like a background color on the UI making something a little hard to read, or a font someone doesn't like (i.e., should be fixed, but when it's appropriate/convenient).[/quote]Thing is, there's no standard definitions so there's nothing stopping a particular company (like maybe the one the OP interviewed at) defining the severity levels on an ascending scale, so eg of a sev 4 would be meteor hit server room, eg of a sev 3 would be production DB down.It's the kind of thing that if asked in an interview has to be immediately followed up by 'what do you defines as a sev4 incident?'Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:45:19 GMTGilaMonsterhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]GilaMonster (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr] Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[/quote]Good idea, but I'd suggest limiting the size of the log, not filling C drive up. Windows gets a little twitchy when there's no free space on C.[/quote]Spoiling all my fun, Gail. The best way to learn how to deal with a truly fragged up computer is to make one. Sadly... I've actually walked onto a site that had a server like that. That was an experience to get going again as a glorified Level I thinking I was actually good at my job. ;-)[/quote]Thank you very much for making me understand craig :-)Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:47:30 GMTVinodh247http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GSquared (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]I dug around with a search engine a bit, and "sev3/sev4" refers to software support "severity level". There aren't standard definitions, but it appears that the higher the number, the lower the importance/impact of the incident, with 3 and 4 being, generally, stuff that barely matters or is merely affecting performance, without affecting accuracy or stopping the show. [/quote]LOL. -10: Big Bang inverts. MS Error: An unfathomed error has resulted in the universe, and your solid state drives are now compressed with two trees and a sun. Data is corrupted. Please run DBCC CHECKDB.You're correct in your searching: Sev1-6 (usually) are usually associated with SLAs (Service Level Agreements). Depending on the location Sev 1/2 are usually catastrophic business failures, with 2 being a vendor based item that the team has little control over.As you mentioned, 3/4 are usually performance based issues that are affecting the company but are not affecting profit or customer relations. One example I remember offhand was our shipping tracking was down at one location. It was important, but we could still do business online. Think standard 'trouble ticket'.These are usually encoded in SLA contracts when you've got a provider doing IT support or front end maintenance (IE: Running the online business site for a Fortune 500) and different severities have different requirements for resolution time and penalties for falling outside that resolution window. They'll also have different escalation impacts. IE: Sev 1: 24/7 support: Call 1 DBA, 1 Developer, 1 System Adminstrator, 1 Business Analyst, immediately. At all times until closed, the conference line must be populated by a member of these groups. For comparison: Sev4: Leave the DBA team an email for the morning to put it in their queue.Hmm, that rambled a bit.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:16:45 GMTEvil Kraig Fhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxI dug around with a search engine a bit, and "sev3/sev4" refers to software support "severity level". There aren't standard definitions, but it appears that the higher the number, the lower the importance/impact of the incident, with 3 and 4 being, generally, stuff that barely matters or is merely affecting performance, without affecting accuracy or stopping the show. Sev1 would be a down server, a corrupt production database, crashed internet connection, and so on, that cause alarm bells to sound and people to run around and flap their arms and make chicken noises. Sev2 is stuff that affects production but isn't stopping the show. Sev5 appears to generally be things like a background color on the UI making something a little hard to read, or a font someone doesn't like (i.e., should be fixed, but when it's appropriate/convenient).Which makes the question kind of odd. I'd expect an interviewer to be more interested in prevention/cure of sev1/sev2 than 3/4.Pretty obvious that, if you have proper DR in place, like automatic failover on to a standby server, a lot of sev1 can be mitigated to 2 or even 3. That would be of interest. But handling of sev3/4? Who cares? Doesn't show anything useful about an interview candidate.Of course, I'd add to the list sev0. That's where the whole company is shut down and goes out of business because of some system/server/farm disaster. Sev-1, where whole civilizations are destroyed by IT errors (it's gotta happen someday). Sev-2, where humanity itself is threatened by an IT mistake (Terminator, et al). Not sure whether -3 would be destruction of a planet or the whole physical universe being wiped out (LHC doing something they really didn't plan for maybe? Ice Nine?). It's completely extensible!Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:49:37 GMTGSquaredhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GSquared (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]GilaMonster (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr] Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[/quote]Good idea, but I'd suggest limiting the size of the log, not filling C drive up. Windows gets a little twitchy when there's no free space on C.[/quote]Which, to me, sounds like a good idea for disaster prep. If you've never had to deal with SQL on a server that's twitchy, you'll be tharn the first time it happens.Just don't do it on a production server. VM or re-imagable test box is best.[/quote]I would certainly opt for the VM if available. Repeated testing is made easier and faster that way.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:44:30 GMTSQLRNNRhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GilaMonster (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr] Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[/quote]Good idea, but I'd suggest limiting the size of the log, not filling C drive up. Windows gets a little twitchy when there's no free space on C.[/quote]Which, to me, sounds like a good idea for disaster prep. If you've never had to deal with SQL on a server that's twitchy, you'll be tharn the first time it happens.Just don't do it on a production server. VM or re-imagable test box is best.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:32:56 GMTGSquaredhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]GilaMonster (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr] Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[/quote]Good idea, but I'd suggest limiting the size of the log, not filling C drive up. Windows gets a little twitchy when there's no free space on C.[/quote]Spoiling all my fun, Gail. The best way to learn how to deal with a truly fragged up computer is to make one. Sadly... I've actually walked onto a site that had a server like that. That was an experience to get going again as a glorified Level I thinking I was actually good at my job. ;-)Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:26:45 GMTEvil Kraig Fhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]vk24/7 (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]Craig,I have not copied these q's from any site, these are the questions i was asked in the interview. I'm a newbie to this site and this is my first post. Before seeing your reply, I never thought that these questions would annoy you so much. Anyway thank you very much all of you for your answers.[/quote]Oh, that's not annoyed. If you want to see me annoyed, go find some of my responses to Celko's postings.I'm trying to emphasize to you that not doing your own research means that I'm not going to give you my research, and that you need to put some thought into your questions. Why would you post a question requesting assistance for an answer about your own personal experience? It seemed you put no thought, nor effort, into the question list before throwing it up here. I put a little thought, and a little effort, into answering... mostly for other readers. Your questions I actually would have simply skipped if there weren't others that would end up reading it because of hitcount from Google and the topic title. We're volunteers. If you won't put any effort in, why should I?This was all mentioned above, but since you specifically mentioned me, I figured it would be worth a response. I'm hoping this will help you in the future when you ask here, or elsewhere, for assistance. Show your work, show your research. Interviews in particular are a sore spot amongst many professionals, as we've pretty much all dealt with the person who's crammed for the test and then forgotten it a week later on the job.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:24:08 GMTEvil Kraig Fhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]vinodh247 (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]Craig,I have not copied these q's from any site, these are the questions i was asked in the interview. I'm a newbie to this site and this is my first post. Before seeing your reply, I never thought that these questions would annoy you so much. Anyway thank you very much all of you for your answers.[/quote]....to add to what Gail said, we don't get annoyed....[b][i]that [/i][/b]easily, [u]but[/u]: providing us with your understanding and current level of knowledge, enables us to better answer you. Make sense?Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:11:12 GMTHenrico Bekkerhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxNo one's annoyed.The simple truth is most of those question are easily researchable, and the ability to research is a very important skill for a DBA.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:07:33 GMTGilaMonsterhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]vinodh247 (1/6/2011)[/b][hr]Craig,I have not copied these q's from any site, these are the questions i was asked in the interview. I'm a newbie to this site and this is my first post. Before seeing your reply, I never thought that these questions would annoy you so much. Anyway thank you very much all of you for your answers.[/quote]There is no problem asking questions at this site. That's what these forums are for.However, some people are annoyed when it is obvious that the original poster has absolutely done no effort to find some answers on his own. Especially annoyed, when it comes to job interviews, as it is considered unethical to 'lie' yourself through an interview with studied answers. I'm not saying this is your case, but it has happened before. A lot.Don't let this scare you to use this forums in the future. If you have genuine questions where you cannot find the answer yourself, there are a lot of (expert) people here willing to help. But remember, Google is your friend :-)Happy discovery of SQL Server!Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:07:26 GMTKoen Verbeeckhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxCraig,I have not copied these q's from any site, these are the questions i was asked in the interview. I'm a newbie to this site and this is my first post. Before seeing your reply, I never thought that these questions would annoy you so much. Anyway thank you very much all of you for your answers.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:59:53 GMTVinodh247http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr] Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[/quote]Good idea, but I'd suggest limiting the size of the log, not filling C drive up. Windows gets a little twitchy when there's no free space on C.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:49:46 GMTGilaMonsterhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]Craig Farrell (1/6/2011)[/b][hr][quote]3) What will you do if tempdb, transaction log file is full[/quote]Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors.[/quote]That's just mean :-DThu, 06 Jan 2011 01:47:10 GMTKoen Verbeeckhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx@ITJITS:I first thought it was WayneS who replied due the avatar.May I kindly ask you to change it?Kinda confusing...Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:37:05 GMTLutzMhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]vinodh247 (1/5/2011)[/b][hr]Hi all,Below are the q's I faced in the interview I've attended yesterday...if anybody knows all the best answer pls contribute.1) Log shipping/Replication/Mirroring/Clustering-uses-steps to implement it2) What will you do if sql server is slow3) What will you do if tempdb, transaction log file is full4) How to take tail backup if db is corrupted-steps5) Can we change the default port/if yes what is the use of doing it?6) Where will you check the error apart from activity monitor in ssms? what will you do if the error log file is missing?7) How do you check disk space/ How do you resolve if you have any issues?8) How do you check/solve blocking issues9) What are the frequent database issues you face in your present job & how you troublshoot it?10)What is the sev3/sev4 issue you have faced till now?[/quote]Part of being a DBA is being able to research and find the answers for such questions on your own. And, I have to tell you, simple memorization of some given answer will not save you on these questions. As Gail points out, these questions are designed to find out what your actual experience is and most don't have an acceptable canned answer. Craig gave some important recommendations on how to gain that experience.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:08:17 GMTJeff Modenhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxThanks for sharing the quntsThu, 06 Jan 2011 00:22:53 GMTSree Arjun Divhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspx[quote][b]vinodh247 (1/5/2011)[/b][hr]9) What are the frequent database issues you face in your present job & how you troublshoot it?10)What is the sev3/sev4 issue you have faced till now?[/quote]We can't answer these. They're about your experience, not ours.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:21:40 GMTGilaMonsterhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxI agree with the above, but in case you're not quite willing to spill your guts for whatever reason, for anyone else who's interested in these topics:[quote][b]vinodh247 (1/5/2011)[/b][hr]1) Log shipping/Replication/Mirroring/Clustering-uses-steps to implement it[/quote]Each of those is a chapter in a book. I recommend starting with google: MSDN SQL <keyword>[quote]2) What will you do if sql server is slow[/quote]These are troubleshooting techniques that range a wide span of items. It's meant to get an idea of your experience, vs. what you learned in a book.[quote]3) What will you do if tempdb, transaction log file is full[/quote]That's a really good question. What WILL you do? Best way to start that research is get yourself a small partition on a drive (usually your C:\ is smaller), create a database, and fill it with stuff until your Transaction Log is out of room. You'll get some errors. Start researching those errors. It's a common issue.[quote]4) How to take tail backup if db is corrupted-steps[/quote]This doesn't make sense directly. Are you remembering the question properly? You want to look into Tail-Log backups, and point in time restores.[quote]5) Can we change the default port/if yes what is the use of doing it?[/quote]I'll give you a hint as to why this is important. A massive worm ran rampant through SQL Servers the world over a while back, and default ports were how it found the software, amongst other things. The question, though, is straightforward enough to directly research.[quote]6) Where will you check the error apart from activity monitor in ssms? what will you do if the error log file is missing?[/quote]Another experience and system familiarity question. Again, easily researched on the net.[quote]7) How do you check disk space/ How do you resolve if you have any issues?[/quote]Again, easily researched if you're talking about automated detection. But c'mon, how do you check it? [quote]8) How do you check/solve blocking issues[/quote]Research: deadlock, exclusive locks, Isolation Levels.[quote]9) What are the frequent database issues you face in your present job & how you troublshoot it?[/quote]Did you think about what you typed here, or did you just cut and paste something you found somewhere? This is a personal question, with a personal answer.[quote]10)What is the sev3/sev4 issue you have faced till now?[/quote]What's a sev3/sev4 issue?To the OP:Seriously? This looks like you snagged a series of interview questions off a site somewhere and are trying to cram-prep for an upcoming interview without even taking the time to read the questions. (How to check for disk space available... grumble mutter) I've given hints and clues here for any other newbies who might stumble on this thread so they have some ideas on what to research on their own, but it looks like you're shortcutting before you even get to the interview.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:21:31 GMTEvil Kraig Fhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxDid you try a google search?Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:20:33 GMTGilaMonsterhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxLet's rather start by [b]you [/b]presenting [b]us [/b]with the answers you gave, and we'll work from there?Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:56:15 GMTHenrico Bekkerhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1043498-146-1.aspxHi all,Below are the q's I faced in the interview I've attended yesterday...if anybody knows all the best answer pls contribute.1) Log shipping/Replication/Mirroring/Clustering-uses-steps to implement it2) What will you do if sql server is slow3) What will you do if tempdb, transaction log file is full4) How to take tail backup if db is corrupted-steps5) Can we change the default port/if yes what is the use of doing it?6) Where will you check the error apart from activity monitor in ssms? what will you do if the error log file is missing?7) How do you check disk space/ How do you resolve if you have any issues?8) How do you check/solve blocking issues9) What are the frequent database issues you face in your present job & how you troublshoot it?10)What is the sev3/sev4 issue you have faced till now?Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:54:24 GMTVinodh247