Exam 70-764: Administering a SQL Database Infrastructure
Skills Measured:
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.
Configure data access and auditing (20–25%)
- Configure encryption
- Implement cell-level encryption, implement Always Encrypted, implement backup encryption, configure transparent data encryption, configure encryption for connections, troubleshoot encryption errors
- Configure data access and permissions
- Manage database object permissions, create and maintain users, create and maintain custom roles, configure user options for Azure SQL Database, configure row-level security, configure dynamic data masking
- Configure auditing
- Configure an audit on SQL Server, query the SQL Server audit log, manage a SQL Server audit, configure an Azure SQL Database audit, analyze audit logs and reports from Azure SQL Database
Manage backup and restore of databases (20–25%)
- Develop a backup strategy
- Back up very large databases, configure alerting for failed backups, back up databases to Azure, manage transaction log backups, configure database recovery models, configure backup automation
- Restore databases
- Perform piecemeal restores, perform page recovery, perform point-in-time recovery, restore file groups, develop a plan to automate and test restores
- Manage database integrity
- Implement database consistency checks, identify database corruption, recover from database corruption
Manage and monitor SQL Server instances (35–40%)
- Monitor database activity
- Monitor current sessions, identify sessions that cause blocking activity, identify sessions that consume tempdb resources, configure the data collector
- Monitor queries
- Manage the Query Store, configure Extended Events and trace events, identify problematic execution plans, troubleshoot server health using Extended Events
- Manage indexes
- Identify and repair index fragmentation, identify and create missing indexes, identify and drop underutilized indexes, manage existing columnstore indexes
- Manage statistics
- Identify and correct outdated statistics, implement Auto Update Statistics, implement statistics for large tables
- Monitor SQL Server instances
- Create and manage operators, create and manage SQL Agent alerts, define custom alert actions, define failure actions, configure database mail, configure Policy-Based Management, identify available space on data volumes, identify the cause of performance degradation
Manage high availability and disaster recovery (20–25%)
- Implement log shipping
- Configure log shipping, monitor log shipping
- Implement AlwaysOn Availability Groups
- Configure Windows clustering, create an availability group, configure read-only routing, manage failover, create distributed availability groups
- Implement failover cluster instances
- Manage shared disks, configure cluster shared volumes