2. Server Hardware Installation and Management (18%)

Hardware is the foundation everything else runs on. Get it wrong and no amount of great software or thoughtful configuration saves you. The 18% weight on this domain reflects that hardware knowledge is a prerequisite, not a specialty—every server administrator needs it.

This phase covers three practical skill areas: physically installing hardware correctly (racking, cabling, power), deploying and managing storage (drives, RAID, shared storage), and maintaining hardware over its lifecycle (out-of-band management, hot-swap, firmware). The exam tests these as scenario-based tasks—"given a scenario, install physical hardware"—so you need to understand not just what components are, but how to choose and configure them correctly.