Hardware, Cabling & Cluster Build-Out: the practice test
Choosing between H100, H200, B200, B300 and RTX PRO 6000; NVLink domains and rack-scale systems; InfiniBand and Ethernet fabrics; the cables, transceivers and optics power nobody budgets; rack power, busways and liquid cooling; bring-up, burn-in and acceptance. The physical layer every cluster rests on, dated to 2026. This test drills exactly that: 11 easy, 14 medium and 10 hard questions, every one explained, every explanation linking into the worked material.
Sample questions, answered
A hall can have several megawatts in total and still be unable to deliver 120 kW to one cabinet position, because distribution, busway taps and cooling are provisioned per rack. Total capacity and per-rack capacity are different numbers, and only the second decides whether the hardware physically fits. Checking it first eliminates more sites than any performance argument does.
Higher signalling rates lose copper reach every generation. Vendor documentation puts passive DAC near 2 m at 800G where the same cable class reached about 3 m at 400G. Reusing a previous build's cable lengths is the most common ordering mistake in a fabric upgrade, and it produces links that are physically fine and electrically too long, so they never train.
Go deeper than the quiz
A practice test measures recall. The material it draws from teaches the reasoning: