Code: 70-450
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Exam 70-450 - Designing, optimizing, and maintaining a database administrative solution using Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Skills measured
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below. The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam. The higher the percentage, the more questions you are likely to see on that content area on the exam.
Please note that the questions may test on, but will not be limited to, the topics described in the bulleted text.
Design a SQL Server instance and a database solution (14%)
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Design for CPU, memory, and storage capacity requirements
- RAID, calculating table size, IO throughput, transaction per second, data compression, non-uniform memory access (NUMA), tempdb capacity
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Design SQL Server instances
- Instance configuration, surface area configuration, CPU affinity, memory allocation, max degree of parallelism (MAXDOP), collation
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Design physical database and object placement
- Heap and index placement, filestream, data and log files, filegroups, partition placement, large object placement, full text catalog
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Design a migration, consolidation, and upgrade strategy
- Multi-instance considerations, SQL Server version upgrade, instance and database collation, server-level and instance-level objects, service pack application
Preparation resources
- Planning and architecture (database engine)
- max degree of parallelism option
- Consolidation using SQL Server 2008
Design a database server security solution (15%)
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Design instance authentication
- Choosing authentication type, logon triggers, regulatory requirements
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Design instance-level security configurations
- Windows service accounts, filestream, proxy, credentials, instance-level permissions, certificate and key management, endpoint security, using SSL certificates, TCP ports
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Design database, schema, and object security parameters
- Users, roles, certificate and key management, Service broker, Common Language Runtime (CLR), ownership chains
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Design a security policy and an audit plan
- Policy-Based Management Framework, security functions, sp_helprotect, catalog views, extended events, notifications
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Design an encryption strategy
- Transparent Data Encryption, encrypting protected data, certificate and key management, filestream
Preparation resources
- Choosing an authentication mode
- Instance configuration
- SQL Server encryption
Design a database solution for high availability (15%)
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Design a failover clustering solution
- Cluster resource group, cluster setup considerations, number of nodes, service accounts
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Design database mirroring
- Whether to use a witness server, Windows Server considerations, suspend versus stop, automatic or manual failover, automatic page repair, database snapshots for reporting, manage instance-level objects
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Design a high-availability solution that is based on replication
- Different replication types, topologies, recover from replication failure, synchronization, health monitoring
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Design a high-availability solution that is based on log shipping
- Manage instance-level objects, changing roles, reporting secondary instance for reporting, monitor server, reinitializing, consistency check on secondary instance
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Select high-availability technologies based on business requirements
- Failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping, replication
Preparation resources
- High availability solutions overview
- Failover clustering how-to topics
- Database mirroring overview
Design a backup and recovery solution (20%)
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Design a backup strategy
- Recovery model, compression, choose backup types, scheduling, backup media, file and filegroups backup, verify backups, key management, mirrored backups, cluster considerations
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Design a recovery strategy
- Page, file, filegroup, partial and online restores, orphan users, instance rebuild, encryption considerations, handle media failures, transaction logs, point in time and mark recovery, filestreams
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Design a recovery test plan
- Log shipping, replication, hardware considerations, schedule a database restore test, handle high-availability failures
Preparation resources
- Introduction to backup and restore strategies in SQL Server
- Choosing the recovery model for a database
- Planning for disaster recovery
Design a monitoring strategy (13%)
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Design a monitoring solution at the operating system level
- System monitor counters, event logs, dynamic management views and functions, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), remote monitoring, analyze results
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Install SQL Server and related services
- Test connectivity; enable and disable features; install SQL Server database engine and SSIS (not SSRS and SSAS); configure an operating system disk
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Design a monitoring solution at the instance level
- Instance, database, and object monitoring, data collection, event notifications, dynamic management objects, analyze results
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Design a solution to monitor performance and concurrency
- Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC), locking, blocking, deadlocks, dynamic management objects, index utilization, tracing, analyze
Preparation resources
- Dynamic management views and functions (Transact-SQL)
- Monitoring (database engine)
- Monitoring and tuning for performance
Design a strategy to maintain and manage databases (14%)
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Design a maintenance strategy for database servers
- Rebuild for page-level compression, index and heap maintenance, partition management, statistics
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Design a solution to govern resources
- Resource Governor (CPU, memory, number of requests per second, resource pools, resource groups), query governor
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Design policies by using Policy-Based Management
- Designing policies and conditions
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Design a data compression strategy
- Row versus page level, update frequency, compression ratio, compressing partitions, specific indexes
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Design a management automation strategy
- SQL Server PowerShell, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), SQL Server Agent, event notifications, DDL triggers
Preparation resources
- Administration (Database Engine)
- Managing SQL Server workloads with Resource Governor
- SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management
Design a strategy for data distribution (9%)
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Administer SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages
- Design security for accessing packages, troubleshoot and restart package, schedule package execution, deploy packages to same or different instances
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Design a strategy to use linked servers
- Security, providers, distributed transactions
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Design a replication strategy for data distribution
- Select replication types, conflict resolution, health monitoring, horizontal and vertical partitioning