1. Background & Experience
Walk me through your experience and background.
What types of databases have you supported?
What percentage of your work is Oracle vs PostgreSQL vs SQL Server/MySQL?
What versions of Oracle/PostgreSQL have you worked with?
What production environments have you supported?
Have you supported enterprise-scale environments?
Have you worked in 24x7 production support environments?
What is the largest database environment you’ve supported?
Have you led teams or mentored junior DBAs?
Describe your role in stakeholder communication.
2. Oracle DBA Fundamentals
Explain your Oracle DBA experience.
What Oracle versions have you worked on?
Explain RAC architecture.
Explain ASM.
Explain RMAN.
How do you perform backup and recovery?
Explain PITR (Point-in-Time Recovery).
How do you handle database corruption?
How do you monitor Oracle databases?
What tools have you used for monitoring?
What dynamic performance views (V$ views) do you use?
Common follow-ups:
Which V$ views do you use for blocking?
How do you identify performance bottlenecks?
How do you troubleshoot high CPU?
3. Oracle Performance Troubleshooting
A production database is suddenly slow — how do you troubleshoot?
CPU spikes to 100% — what do you check?
How do you troubleshoot blocking sessions?
How do you identify long-running queries?
How do you use AWR/ASH/ADDM?
How do you analyze execution plans?
What performance tuning techniques have you implemented?
Tell me about a major performance issue you solved.
Expected depth areas:
AWR
ASH
TKPROF
execution plans
wait events
locking/blocking
SQL tuning
indexing
session analysis
OS vs DB correlation
4. Oracle Data Guard / HA / DR
Explain Data Guard architecture.
Explain physical vs logical standby.
How do you monitor Data Guard lag?
How do you troubleshoot Data Guard lag?
Primary DB crashed — standby is behind by 30 minutes. What do you do?
Explain switchover vs failover.
What is Fast-Start Failover (FSFO)?
What is the observer?
What is Data Guard Broker?
Explain RTO/RPO considerations.
How do you reinstate a failed primary?
How do you design HA for Oracle?
Common follow-ups:
What if archives are missing?
How do you manually apply logs?
What happens if standby is behind?
How do you recover with lag?
5. Oracle GoldenGate (Heavy Focus Area)
Fundamentals
Explain GoldenGate architecture.
What versions of GoldenGate have you worked with?
What is classic vs integrated architecture?
What is GoldenGate Microservices architecture?
Have you worked with microservices?
Explain extract, pump, replicat.
Troubleshooting
Production GoldenGate replication is lagging by 5–6 hours. How do you troubleshoot?
How do you identify whether lag is source or target side?
What do checkpoints do?
Explain checkpoint tables.
What happens when a process fails?
How do you restart replication?
Advanced
Explain bidirectional replication.
Explain conflict detection and resolution.
How do you tune GoldenGate performance?
Explain integrated replicat tuning.
How do you troubleshoot long-running transactions?
How do you design GoldenGate HA?
Explain heterogeneous replication.
6. PostgreSQL (Second Major Focus Area)
Fundamentals
Explain WAL.
What is autovacuum?
Why does PostgreSQL bloat happen?
Explain dead tuples.
Explain PostgreSQL architecture.
What PostgreSQL versions have you worked with?
Recovery / HA
PostgreSQL primary crashes during peak traffic — what do you do?
How do you recover PostgreSQL?
Explain failover.
Explain streaming replication.
Explain PostgreSQL HA.
Performance
How do you troubleshoot PostgreSQL performance?
How do you identify slow queries?
How do you tune PostgreSQL?
What tools do you use?
Explain EXPLAIN ANALYZE.
How do you troubleshoot table bloat?
Expected depth:
WAL replay
vacuum/autovacuum
dead tuples
replication
explain analyze
indexing
pg_stat views
HA/failover concepts
7. Cloud / AWS Database Engineering
What AWS services have you worked with?
What RDS experience do you have?
What Aurora experience do you have?
Have you worked with Aurora PostgreSQL?
Aurora MySQL?
Explain CloudWatch usage.
Have you worked with AWS DMS?
Explain migration using DMS.
What EC2-hosted database experience do you have?
How do you monitor cloud databases?
Explain cloud database cost optimization.
How do you scale cloud databases?
Common follow-ups:
IAM
S3
backups
HA in AWS
RDS failover
Aurora failover
8. Database Migration Questions
Have you done migrations before?
Explain Oracle → PostgreSQL migration.
Explain Oracle → AWS migration.
Explain minimal downtime migration.
Explain zero downtime migration.
What migration tools have you used?
Have you used:
RMAN
Data Pump
GoldenGate
DMS
ora2pg
SCT
Common follow-ups:
cutover planning
rollback strategy
validation
downtime minimization
stakeholder coordination
Tell me about a major outage you handled.
Explain a Sev1 incident.
Walk me through your RCA process.
Describe a production outage you owned.
How do you handle bridge calls?
How do you communicate during incidents?
How do you prioritize incidents?
Tell me about a failed migration.
10. Monitoring & Tooling
What monitoring tools have you used?
OEM?
CloudWatch?
Grafana?
ServiceNow?
Splunk?
How do you set alerts?
What metrics do you monitor?
11. DevOps / Automation (Light–Moderate Focus)
What Jenkins experience do you have?
Ansible?
Terraform?
Shell scripting?
Python?
What automation have you implemented?
Common follow-up:
Rate yourself 1–10 on these tools.
Anu tends to challenge resume inflation here.
13. Leadership / Team Lead Questions (Critical for Anu’s Lead Role)
Have you led teams?
How many DBAs reported to you?
How do you mentor junior DBAs?
How do you assign work?
How do you handle escalations?
How do you communicate with stakeholders?
Tell me about a difficult stakeholder.
How do you manage Sev1 communications?
How do you coordinate during migrations?
For lead candidates client is evaluating:
communication clarity
ownership
stakeholder management
technical authority
escalation handling
14. Work Environment / Logistics
Are you comfortable working EST hours?
Night shift experience?
Weekend migration support?
On-call support?
24x7 production support?
No comments:
Post a Comment