IICTI Certified Server Administration

Holders demonstrate that they can apply and evaluate linux boot chain, systemd and cgroup v2 resource control, windows Server 2025 platform engineering and automation, directory services, Kerberos and privileged access tiering and server hardening against CIS benchmarks and DISA STIGs, plus 7 further areas, in realistic professional scenarios, as defined in the AQSCERT scheme for Server Administration.

Who it is for: Professionals working, or preparing to work, in it operations roles.

1. 01Linux boot chain, systemd and cgroup v2 resource control7% of the exam

   • Diagnose and engineer Linux boot, service supervision and resource isolation behaviour on production servers.
   • Scope: UEFI Secure Boot, shim/GRUB2 and systemd-boot, initramfs/dracut, kernel lockdown, systemd units, targets, drop-ins and dependency ordering, cgroup v2 slices and resource limits, journald and sysctl tuning.
2. 02Windows Server 2025 platform engineering and automation7% of the exam

   • Architect and operate a hardened, automation-first Windows Server estate with least-privilege administration.
   • Scope: Server Core, hotpatching via Azure Arc, Windows Admin Center, PowerShell 7 remoting and JEA, DSC v3, Group Policy architecture and precedence, Windows LAPS and Credential Guard.
3. 03Directory services, Kerberos and privileged access tiering11% of the exam

   • Design and evaluate identity and privileged access controls that contain credential theft and lateral movement across mixed server estates.
   • Scope: AD DS tiering and enterprise access model, Kerberos (constrained and resource-based delegation, PAC), FreeIPA/SSSD and realm trusts, Entra ID hybrid identity, PAWs, JIT/JEA, SSH certificate authorities.
4. 04Server hardening against CIS benchmarks and DISA STIGs11% of the exam

   • Evaluate and implement measurable hardening baselines with controlled exceptions and continuous compliance evidence.
   • Scope: CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs, SELinux/AppArmor policy, WDAC/AppLocker, attack surface reduction, OpenSCAP and Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit, drift detection and exception management.
5. 05Storage, filesystems and data integrity engineering13% of the exam

   • Design server storage layouts that balance performance, resilience and integrity for specific workload profiles.
   • Scope: LVM thin provisioning, XFS/ext4/Btrfs/ZFS trade-offs, ReFS and Storage Spaces Direct, multipath iSCSI and NVMe-oF, RAID and erasure coding, write barriers, snapshot and application consistency.
6. 06Performance analysis with eBPF, perf and Windows Performance Toolkit7% of the exam

   • Diagnose CPU, memory, I/O and network bottlenecks quantitatively and translate findings into tuning and capacity decisions.
   • Scope: USE and RED methods, perf, eBPF/bpftrace and BCC tools, pressure stall information, NUMA and CPU pinning, I/O schedulers, Windows Performance Recorder/Analyzer, capacity forecasting.
7. 07Advanced fault isolation, crash analysis and root-cause investigation7% of the exam

   • Lead systematic root-cause investigations of complex server failures and drive durable corrective actions.
   • Scope: kdump/crash and kernel oops analysis, WinDbg and memory dump triage, strace/ltrace, Sysinternals ProcMon, hypothesis-driven troubleshooting, blameless post-incident review and corrective action tracking.
8. 08Virtualisation, high availability clustering and fencing7% of the exam

   • Architect and troubleshoot highly available virtualised and clustered server platforms with correct quorum and fencing design.
   • Scope: KVM/libvirt and Hyper-V internals, Proxmox and post-Broadcom VMware alternatives, live migration, Windows Failover Clustering and Cluster Shared Volumes, Pacemaker/Corosync quorum, STONITH fencing and split-brain prevention.
9. 09Fleet patching, live patching and lifecycle management13% of the exam

   • Design and govern risk-based patch and lifecycle programmes for large heterogeneous server fleets.
   • Scope: Ring-based patch rollout, WSUS and Azure Update Manager, Ansible-driven patch orchestration, kpatch/Livepatch, maintenance windows and rollback, OS end-of-life planning (RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, Windows Server lifecycle).
10. 10Backup, recovery and ransomware resilience9% of the exam

    • Evaluate and prove server recovery capability against ransomware and destructive failure scenarios.
    • Scope: 3-2-1-1-0 strategy, immutable and air-gapped repositories, RPO/RTO design, application-consistent backups, bare-metal and AD forest recovery, isolated recovery environments, restore testing.
11. 11Server observability, audit logging and compliance evidence8% of the exam

    • Design server telemetry and audit pipelines that support operations, forensics and regulatory evidence.
    • Scope: auditd and Sysmon, Windows Event Forwarding, Prometheus node_exporter, OpenTelemetry Collector, centralised log pipelines, log integrity and retention aligned to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and NIS2.

Question types

Single choice 100%

Delivery

Online (remote proctored), Test centre, On-site (corporate)

Retakes

Up to three attempts within any 12-month period. A 14-day waiting period applies after a first unsuccessful attempt and 30 days after a second. Each retake requires a new booking and fee. Retakes draw a different randomised form from the question bank.

Provisional cut score — psychometric validation is required before live delivery. Blueprint v1.0.

1. 1

   Register

   Create a free account and start the programme.

2. 2

   Practice

   Online practice test (coming soon).

3. 3

   Training

   Optional

   Online course or classroom — or skip it.

4. 4

   Certification

   Independent exam and certification decision.

Training is optional and does not by itself confer certification. Find a training partner