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1. An administrator wants to connect ESXi host directly from vSphere Web Client.
Which ports are required for this purpose?
Normally vSphere Web Client is used to connect vCenter Server and VClient is used to connect
ESXi hosts. But vSphere Web Client can also be used to connect vCenter Server, but for this
purpose you will need 443 TCP, 902 TCP and UDP, and 903 TCP ports to be opened from
Security Profile.
2. Clock time of an ESXi 6.x host is not correct. What should an administrator do to
correct this issue?
To correct the time on ESXi host, modify the time for the host using the vSphere client and,
correct the NTP settings in the /etc/ntp.conf file.
3. An administrator wants to shutdown the host using ESXi host. Which option would
be used in Direct Console User Interface to perform this task?
To shutdown the host for Direct Console User Interface (DCUI), administrator will press F12
Key.
4. An administrator can access ESXi host via vCenter Server using vSphere Web
Client but unable to access directly via VClient. What should he do to access ESXi
host directly?
If ESXi host connected to vSphere Web Client is being accessed and can’t be accessed directly,
we should check that Lockdown is not enabled. If it enabled, we should be disabled. Because if
Lockdown is enabled, ESXi hosts can only be accessed via vCenter Server, you cannot directly
access any host.
After replacing root certificate and machine certificate (intermediate CA), following two steps
are needed to perform.
Administrator will add the users to Exception Users and enable the service to allow ESXi Shell
or SSH access.
9. What happens to the files contained on shared storage When a Content Library is
deleted?
When Content Library is deleted, all stored files in content library will be deleted.
10. What is the maximum number of vCPUs are required for a VM in vSphere 6.0?
11. A windows domain user can be logged into vSphere using vSphere Web Client.
What are the requirements to be met for this feature to be available and functional?
An administrator can allow users to login to vSphere Web Client using Windows session
authentication. For this purpose, Install the vSphere Web Client Integration browser plug-in on
each computer from where a user will sign in. The users must be signed into Windows using
Active Directory user accounts. And, administrator must create a valid Identity Source in Single
Sign-On for the users’ domain.
12. An administrator wants to clone a virtual machine using the vSphere Client. Which
explains why the Clone option is missing?
To clone a VM can be perform from vCenter Server either you connected via vSphere Web
Client or VClient. If you are directly connected to an ESXi host, you cannot perform cloning of a
VM.
13. What will happen if the .nvram file is deleted accidently from a VM?
.nvram file is used to store the BIOS state of a VM. If it deleted for some reason, then, .nvram
file will be created again when the virtual machine is powered on.
14. An administrator wants to connect the vSphere 5.5 Client to ESXi 6.x host. What
will occur?
If administrator tries to connect the vSphere 5.5 Client to ESXi 6.x host, the operation will
prompt the administrator to run a script to upgrade the vSphere Client.
15. Which one of secondary Private VLANs (PVLANs) type can send packets to
Isolated PVLAN?
Promiscuous type of PVLAN can communicate and send packets to an Isolated PVLAN.
16. What sample roles are provided by default when vCenter is installed?
When vCenter is installed, Virtual machine user and Network Administrator roles are provided.
17. What will happen when all paths down (APD) event occurs for the software FCoE
storage?
If all paths down event occurs, Spanning Tree Protocol is enabled on the network ports.
18. What methods are available for upgrade a host from ESXi 5.x to ESXi 6.x?
vSphere Update Manager (VUM), esxcli command line tool, and vSphere Auto Deploy can be
used to upgrade.
Before upgrading a VM hardware, we should create a backup or snapshot of the VM, should
upgrade VMware Tools to the latest version, and verify that the VM is stored VMFS or NFS
datastore.
20. vCenter Server upgradation fails at the vCenter Single Sign-On installation. What
should do to complete the upgrade process?
Before upgrading vCenter Server, verify that the VMware Directory service can stop by
manually restarting it. If it stopped manually, then you can start upgradation process of vCenter
Server.
21. What prerequisites should be considered before upgrading the vCenter Server
Appliance?
In case of upgradation of vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) or after fresh installation, Client
Integration Plugin (CIP) will be installed in both cases.
22. After deploying a PSC, vCenter Server is not being installed and shows the
following error:
Could not contact Lookup Service. Please check VM_ssoreg.log.
If this error appears then verify that the clocks on the host machines running the PSC, vCenter
Server, and the vSphere Web Client are synchronized with each other. And also ensure that there
is no firewall blocking port 7444 between the PSC and vCenter Server.
23. An administrator installed Windows Server 2008 and want to install vCenter Server
on it but failed when installing on a Windows virtual machine?
vCenter Server installation requires 64bit Windows OS to install. If you try to install it on
Windows Server 2008, it would not be installed and installation will be failed. vCenter Server
will be installed in Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher Windows OS.
24. What is the minimum Virtual Hardware version required for vFlash Read Cache?
vFlash Read Cache was first in vSphere 5.5, and the minimum Virtual Hardware version for
vSphere 5.5 is version 10.
25. ESXi host is added in vCenter Server but not responding in vSphere Web Client. If
this issue occurs due to firewall, which port should be opened?
If administrator sees no response of added ESXi 6.x host in vCenter Server, and the issue is
caused by network firewall blocking traffic. Then he should check that port 902 (UDP) is not
blocked by firewall. If it happens, enable the port from Security Profile by using vSphere Web
Client by selecting said ESXi host in vCenter Server.
If it happens, administrator should check vmware.log and hostd.log log files to troubleshoot the
issue.
If a VM appears in orphaned state, this could cause a VMware High Availability host failure has
occurred. And the virtual machine was unregistered directly on the ESXi host.
28. While upgrading an ESXi 5.5 host to ESXi 6.x, following error appears:
MEMORY_SIZE
It indicates insufficient memory on the ESXi host to complete the upgrade process of an ESXi
host from ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.x.
29. To remove a host from a vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS), following error message
is observed:
Before removing vDS, it is ensured that VMkernel network adapters on the vDS are not in use. If
any of resource of vDS is being used, then above mentioned error message with resource ID will
appear.
30. An administrator wants to monitor network traffic and tries to capture network
traffic for a VM, but cannot see the expected traffic in the packet capture tool. What
should he do to resolve the problem?
If administrator needs to capture network traffic for a VM, he should Enable Promiscuous Mode
on the relevant port group. Then he can capture the network traffic by using any networking
traffic capturing tool.
31. A vSAN Cluster is created with six nodes along with the fault domain, and three of
them moved into fault domain. One-member node of fault domain fails. What will
happen with the remaining two nodes exist in fault domain?
When a member node of fault domain fails, the remaining two fault domain members will be
treated as failed.
Fault domain is configured at vSAN Cluster level and nodes will be added in this domain. If any
member node fails due to any reason, remaining members of fault domain will also be
considered as fail.
33. It is observed that a VM storage activity on an ESXi 6.x host is negatively affecting a
VM storage activity on another host that is accessing the same VMFS Datastore.
Which action would mitigate the issue?
To control the storage activity of a VM to affecting another VM’s storage activity, Storage IO
Control (SIOC) should be enabled. Storage I/O Control provides much needed control of storage
I/O and should be used to ensure that the performance of your critical VMs are not affected by
VMs from other hosts when there is contention for I/O resources.
34. While upgrading an ESXi host from 5.5to 6.0, administrator runs the following
command:
35. To troubleshoot a CPU performance issues of a VM, which counters will be used to
demonstrate CPU contention?
To test the performance of an ESXi host in the form of memory, CPU, and network utilization,
ESXTOP tool is used. It is a very good tool available for VMware administrators to troubleshoot
the performance issues. For configuring ESXTOP, you’ll need vSphere Client and putty and
SSH session should be enabled. For CPU performance testing, %RDY, %MLMTD, and %CSTP
counters are used.
36. An administrator tries to run esxtop by enabling SSH and using putty to
troubleshoot CPU performance issues, but no output displayed. How to resolve this
issue?
To display output in ESXTOP, press f and place an asterisk next to each field that should be
displayed.
37. An administrator wants to monitor VMs on a host using vCenter Server and send
notifications when memory usage crosses 80%. What should an administrator do in
vCenter Server to accomplish this?
To monitor VM’s memory usage that reaches 80%, vCenter Server alarm will be created that
will monitor VM’s memory usage and set an action to email the notification.
38. An administrator created a DRS cluster and it became unbalanced. What are likely
causes to become unbalanced?
DRS cluster can become unbalance when Affinity rules are preventing VMs from being moved.
And a device is mounted to a VM is preventing vMotion from one host on another.
39. An IT administrator configured two vCenter Servers within a PSC, and needs to
grant a user privileges that can access all environments. What access level is
required to access all the environment?
To access multiple vCenter Servers within a PSC, it requires Global Permission to access all
environments.
40. An administrator created 10 ESXi 6.x hosts via Auto Deploy for a new Test/Dev
cluster and all hosts are configured to obtain their IP address via DHCP. Which
DCUI option should the administrator use to renew the DHCP lease for the hosts?
To renew the DHCP lease for the hosts, “Reset Management Network” of Direct Console User
Interface (DCUI) option is used.
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Hypervisor
1. What is VMKernel and why it is important?
VMkernel is a virtualization interface between a Virtual Machine and the ESXi host which stores
VMs. It is responsible to allocate all available resources of ESXi host to VMs such as memory,
CPU, storage etc. It’s also controlled special services such as vMotion, Fault tolerance, NFS,
traffic management and iSCSI. To access these services, VMkernel port can be configured on
ESXi server using a standard or distributed vSwitch. Without VMkernel, hosted VMs cannot
communicate with ESXi server.
A hypervisor is a virtualization layer that enables multiple operating systems to share a single
hardware host. Each operating system or VM is allocated physical resources such as memory,
CPU, storage etc by the host. There are two types of hypervisors
3. What is Virtualization?
The process of creating virtual versions of physical components i-e Servers, Storage Devices,
Network Devices on a physical host is called virtualization. Virtualization lets you run multiple
virtual machines on a single physical machine which is called ESXi host.
Server virtualization: consolidates the physical server and multiple OS can be run on a
single server.
Network Virtualization: Provides complete reproduction of physical network into a
software-defined network.
Storage Virtualization: Provides an abstraction layer for physical storage resources to
manage and optimize in virtual deployment.
Application Virtualization: increased mobility of applications and allows migration of
VMs from a host on another with minimal downtime.
Desktop Virtualization: virtualize desktop to reduce cost and increase service
Fault Tolerance (FT)
5. What is VMware FT?
FT stands for Fault Tolerance very prominent component of VMware vSphere. It provides
continuous availability for VMs when an ESXi host fails. It supports up to 4 vCPUs and 64 GB
memory. FT is very bandwidth intensive and 10GB NIC is recommended to configure it. It
creates a complete copy of an entire VM such as storage, compute, and memory.
The communication between two ESXi hosts is called FT logging when FT is configured
between them. The pre-requisition of configuring FT is to configure VMKernel port.
The main difference between VMware HA and FT is: HA is enabled per cluster and VMware FT
is enabled per VM. In HA, VMs will be re-started and powered-on on another host in case of a
host failure, while in FT there is no downtime because the second copy will be activated in case
of host failure.
Virtual Networking
11. What is virtual networking?
A network of VMs running on a physical server that is connected logically with each other is
called virtual networking.
vSS stands for Virtual Standard Switch is responsible for communication of VMs hosted on a
single physical host. it works like a physical switch automatically detects a VM which want to
communicate with other VM on a same physical server.
13. What is vDS?
vDS stands for Virtual Distributed Switch acts as a single switch in a whole virtual environment
and is responsible to provide central provisioning, administration, and monitoring of the virtual
network.
4096 ports per host are available either in a standard switch or distributed switch.
VMKernel adapter provides network connectivity to the ESXi host to handle network traffic for
vMotion, IP Storage, NAS, Fault Tolerance, and vSAN. For each type of traffic such as vMotion,
vSAN etc. separate VMKernal adapter should be created and configured.
17. What is the main use of port groups in data center virtualization?
You can segregate the network traffic by using port groups such as vMotion, FT, management
traffic etc.
18. What are three port groups are configured in ESXi networking?
A logical configuration on the switch port to segment the IP Traffic where each segment cannot
communicate with other segments without proper rules mentioned is called VLAN and every
VLAN has a proper number called VLAN ID.
The practice of inserting VLAN ID into a packet header to identify which VLAN packet belongs
to is called VLAN tagging.
21. What are three network security policies/modes on vSwitch?
Promiscuous mode
MAC address change
Forged transmits
The default mode is Reject. If Accept is selected, VM will receive all traffic port group via
vSwitch.
The default mode of this policy is Reject. If the Accept is selected, a host will accept requests to
change the effective MAC address.
The default mode is Reject. If Accept is selected, a host will not compare the source and
effective MAC address transmitted from a VM.
vCenter Server
25. What are the main components of vCenter Server architecture?
PSC stands for Platform Services Controller first introduced in version 6 of VMware vSphere
which handles infrastructure security functions. It has three main components.
Embedded
centralized
Embedded Deployment
External deployment
vROP provides the operation dashboards for performance analytics, capacity optimization and
monitoring the virtual environment.
30. What is the basic security step to secure vCenter Server and users?
Authenticate vCenter Server with Active Directory. By using this we can assign specific roles to
users and can also manage the virtual environment in an efficient way.
Datastore is a storage location where virtual machine files are stored and accessed. Datastore is
based on a file system which is called VMFS, NFS.
Vmdk is a VM disk file and stores data of a VM. It can be up to 62 TB in size in vSphere 6.0
version.
1. Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroes: every virtual disk is created by default in this disk
format. Physical space is allocated to a VM when a virtual disk is created. It can’t be
converted to thin disk.
2. Thick Provision Eager Zeroes: this disk type is used in VMware Fault Tolerance. All
required disk space is allocated to a VM at time of creation. It takes more time to create a
virtual disk compare to other disk formats.
3. Thin provision: It provides an on-demand allocation of disk space to a VM. When data
size grows, the size of a disk will grow. Storage capacity utilization can be up to 100%
with thin provisioning.
4. What is Storage vMotion?
Version 11
Version 13
Platform Services Controller (PSC) is introduced in vSphere 6.0. vSphere 6.0 is also known as
Virtual hardware version 11.
39. How many maximum hosts can manage a vCenter Server in vSphere 6.0?
In vSphere 6.0, a single vCenter Server can manage up to 1000 hosts either in Windows or in
vCenter Appliance (vCSA).
Virtual Volume a new VM disk management concept introduced in vSphere 6.0 that enables
array-based operations at the virtual disk level. VVol is automatically created when a virtual disk
is created in a virtual environment for a VM.
43. How many licensing options for vSphere 6.0?
Standard Edition: Contains 1 vCenter Server Standard license, up to 2 vCPUs for Fault
Tolerance, vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, VVols etc.
Enterprise Edition: Same as Standard Edition additionally APIs for Array Integration and
Multipathing, DRS, and DPM.
Enterprise Plus: Includes all features of Standard and Enterprise Editions with
additionally Fault Tolerance upto 4 vCPUs and 64GB of RAM. It also includes
Distributed vSwitch and the most expensive licensing option of vSphere 6.0.
Content Libraries
45. What is the Content Library?
Content Library is the central location point between two different geographical locations with
vCenter Servers where you can store VM templates, ISO images, scripts etc. and share them
between geographical locations
We create VM templates and can share on another geographical location of a company without
creating again on other locations. It has many benefits such as sharing and consistency, storage
efficiency, and secure subscription.
VSAN
50. What is vSAN?
Virtual SAN is a software-defined storage first introduced in vSphere 5.5 and is fully integrated
with vSphere. It aggregates locally attached storage of ESXi hosts which are part of a cluster and
creates a distributed shared solution.
Hybrid: Uses both flash-based and magnetic disks for storage. Flash are used for cashing,
while magnetic disks are used for capacity or storage.
All-Flash: Uses flash for both caching and for storage
54. Are there VSAN ready nodes are available in the market?
Yes, vSAN-ready such as VxRail 4.0 and 4.5 are available in the market. VxRail is the
combination of min 3 servers which are part of a cluster and can scale up to 64 servers.
To configure a vSAN, you should have minimum 3 ESXi hosts/servers in the form of a vSAN
cluster. If one of the servers fails, a vSAN cluster will fail.
56. How are many maximum ESXi hosts allowed for vSAN?
57. How many disk groups and max magnetic disks are allowed in single disk group?
Maximum 5 disk groups are allowed on an ESXi host which is a part of a vSAN cluster and a
maximum of 7 magnetic and 1 SSD per disk group is allowed.
58. How many types of storages can we use in our virtual environment?
Network File System (NFS) is a file sharing protocol that ESXi hosts use to communicate with a
NAS device. NAS is a specialized storage device that connects to a network and can provide file
access services to ESXi hosts.
Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is a file stored in a VMFS volume that acts as a proxy for a raw
physical device. RDM enables you to store virtual machine data directly on a LUN. RDM is
recommended when a VM must interact with a real disk on the SAN.
An iSCSI SAN consists of an iSCSI storage system, which contains one or more storage
processors. TCP/IP protocol is used to communicate between host and storage array. an iSCSI
initiator is configured with the ESXi host. an iSCSI initiator can be a hardware-based either
dependent or independent and software-based known as iSCSI software initiator.
vApp
64. What is vApp?
vApp is a container or group where more than one VM can be package and manage multi-tiered
applications for specific requirements for example, Web server, database server, and application
server can be configured as a vApp and can be defined their power-on and power-off sequence.
Miscellaneous
66. What is VMware DRS?
DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler; that automatically balances available resources
among various hosts by using cluster or resource pools. With the help of HA, DRS can move
VMs from one host to another to balance the available resources among VMs.
Share: A value that specifies the relative priority or importance of a VM access to given
resource.
Limit: Consumption of a CPU cycle or host physical memory that cannot cross the defined value
(limit).
Reservation: This value defines in the form of CPU or memory and must be available for a VM
to start.
An alarm is a notification which appears when an event occurs. Many default alarms exist for
many inventory objects. Alarms can be created and modified using vSphere Web Client;
69. What are the hot-pluggable devices which can be added while VM is running?
When a VM is converted into a format which can be used to create a VM with pre-defined
settings is called a template. An installed VM can be converted into a template but it cannot be
powered-on.
To create a copy of a VM with the timestamp as a restore point is called a snapshot. Snapshots
are taken when an upgrade or software installation is required. For better performance, a
snapshot should be removed after a particular task is performed.
73. What is vMotion and what is the main purpose to use it in a virtual environment?
It is a very prominent feature of VMware vSphere used to live migrate running VMs from one
ESXi host to another without any downtime. Datastores and ESXi hosts both can be used while
vMotion.
A clone is a copy of a virtual machine. By cloning a VM, it will save time if multiple VMs with
the same configurations are required to configure. While a template is a master copy of an image
created from a VM which can be later used to create many clones. After converting a VM to a
template, it can’t be powered-on or edited.
Network Heartbeat
Datastore Heartbeat
When HA is enabled in a cluster, all hosts take part in a selection process to be selected as a
master host. A host which has the highest number of datastores mounted will be selected as a
master host. All other hosts will remain slave hosts.
It is a suite of utilities which are used to enhance the performance of a VM in the form of
graphics, mouse/keyboard movement, network card, and other peripheral devices.
Stands for Distributed Power Management is a feature of VMware DRS is used to monitor
required resources in a cluster. When the resources are decreases due to low usage, VMware
DPM consolidates workloads and shut down the hosts which are not being used, and when
resources are increased it automatically power on the un-used hosts.
It is a command-line interface is used to run repair and diagnostics of ESXi hosts. It can be
accessed via DCUI, vCenter Server enable/disable, and via SSH.
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1) trying to install updates from a zip file but always gives the same error. "No Space Left
On Device"
The solution was to enter the host webui and Go to Host > System > Swap and activate swap on our
datastore vmfs. Once the setting was enabled the esxcli software profile update command worked
normally.
1. In the console screen of the ESXi host, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to see the Direct Console User
Interface (DCUI) screen.
2. Press F12 to view the shutdown options for the ESXi host.
3. Press F11 to reboot.
4. When the Hypervisor progress bar starts loading, press Shift+R. You will see the
warning: