CompTIA Server+ (SK0-005) Study Guide

Preparing for the CompTIA Server+ exam (SK0-005)? This is the complete study guide — six chapters covering all four official exam domains, written in plain language for working technicians and engineers who rack, run, secure, and fix servers for a living.

The real exam: a maximum of 90 questions — multiple-choice and performance-based — in 90 minutes, with a passing score of 750 on a scale of 100–900. CompTIA recommends two years of hands-on experience working in a server environment and CompTIA A+ certification or equivalent knowledge; there is no mandatory prerequisite. The certification is valid for 3 years and renews through CompTIA's Continuing Education program.

What's inside:

- Chapter 1 — Server Hardware Installation and Storage: racking done safely (unit sizes, rack balancing, floor load limits, rail kits, PDU and KVM placement), power and network cabling (redundant power, UPS, fiber and transceivers), tower, rack-mount, and blade chassis, server components and the HCL — then storage: every RAID level with worked capacity arithmetic, capacity planning, SSD wear classes and HDD speed tiers, interfaces, and NAS versus SAN (file versus block)

- Chapter 2 — Hardware Maintenance and Operating System Installation: out-of-band management that saves the 2 a.m. drive, local administration, hot-swappable hardware, BIOS/UEFI, and firmware discipline — then OS installation in full: GUI and core, slipstreamed and unattended installs, imaging and templates, GPT versus MBR settled with numbers, and the five exam file systems (ext4, NTFS, VMFS, ReFS, ZFS)

- Chapter 3 — Network Services and Server Functions: IP configuration, VLANs and gateways, DNS and DHCP (including the APIPA symptom), the six server roles, baselining and the monitoring counters that matter (IOPS, capacity versus utilization), event logs end to end, storage management, data migration between operating systems, and the administrative interfaces (console, remote desktop, SSH, web)

- Chapter 4 — High Availability, Virtualization, and Server Management: clusters (active-active, active-passive, failover, failback, heartbeat), fault tolerance, load balancing and NIC teaming; virtualization (host versus guest, bridged versus NAT, overprovisioning); scripting basics across Bash, batch, PowerShell, and VBScript; asset management and documentation (MTBF, MTTR, RPO, RTO, SLA); and licensing models from per-core to node-locked

- Chapter 5 — Security and Disaster Recovery: encryption at rest and in transit, physical security from bollards to vestibules, identity and access management (MFA factors, segregation of duties), risks and mitigation (SIEM, DLP, PCI DSS), server hardening on every layer, decommissioning and media destruction done right, backups with a worked rotation comparison (full, incremental, differential, synthetic full), and disaster recovery sites and replication

- Chapter 6 — Troubleshooting and Capstone: CompTIA's troubleshooting methodology step by step, then hardware, storage, OS and software, network, and security troubleshooting as symptom→cause→tool diagnosis, the full command kit, and a capstone that runs one bad morning in the server room through the methodology across all four domains

Files included (1):

- server-plus-study-guide.pdf — the complete 6-chapter guide (100 pages)

Want practice questions too? The Deluxe tier adds the full 500-question practice bank and the cheat sheets, plus license-key access to the online practice hub.

Independent study material. Not affiliated with or endorsed by CompTIA.