Top 10 VMware scenario based interview questions and answers

1 .Which Information can the administrator use to identify ISCSI nodes?

Options are:

A.              MAC address

B.              IQN

C.              WWN

D.              LUN ID

Ans: B. IQN 

Reason is: IQN is an abbreviation for iSCSI qualified Name. IQN is used to identify iSCSI nodes in SAN networks, same as MAC addresses used to identify network devices in Ethernet networks.

Similar to IQN, WWN is used to identify FC/FCoE devices in SAN networks.

 

2.  An Administrator needs to prevent 2 virtual machines from running on the same host. Which DRS policy should be applied?

 

Options are: 

A.              VM-to-VM affinity

B.              VM-to-host affinity

C.              VM-to-VM anti-affinity 

D.              VM-to-host anti-affinity

 

Ans: VM-to-VM anti-affinity 

5. Reason is: DRS Anti Affinity rules are used to prevent VMs running on the same host whereas Affinity rules are used to keep VMs together on the same host at any time. VM-to-host affinity rules are used to bind VM to specific hosts where VM-to-VM rules are about 2 VMs binding.  

 

3. An Administrator is planning a new vsphere deployment using shared storage. The solution must be supported.

 

vMotion

SvMotion

RDM Disks

 

Options are:

A.              CIFS

B.              iSCSI

C.              NFS

D.              vSAN

 

Ans:  B. iSCSI

Reason is: iSCSI, NFS and vSAN, all three storage supports vMotion and storage vMotion feature. But only iSCSI is the block level storage which supports RDM disks. CIFS is file sharing protocols used for windows operating systems.

CIFS and NFS are file sharing protocols and vSAN is object based storage.

 

4. Which vSphere 6.X feature automatically distributes resources among the virtual machines during contention?

 

Options are:

A.              Storage vMotion

B.              vSphere vMotion

C.              DPM

D.              DRS

 

Ans :   DRS 

Reason is:  DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler. DRS is a vSphere cluster level feature which provides resource management capabilities like Load balancing and virtual machine placement. DRS always strives to keep your VMs happy and allocate required compute resources to run VMs efficiently.

 

Storage vMotion -: Use to change underline Datastore of a VM.

vSphere vMotion-: Use to change underline host of a VM

DPM-: DPM is used for better power management of a VM.

 

5. Which vSphere 6.X feature enables you to mitigate the effect of storage latency during peak load periods in a virtualized data center?

Options are:

A.              NFS

B.              iSCSI

C.              NIOS

D.              SIOC

 

Ans: SIOC

              Reason is: SIOC stands for Storage IO control

              The purpose of SIOC is to address the “Noisy Neighbor” problem where low priority VM impact high priority VMs. SIOC provides I/O prioritization of virtual machines running on shared storage. SIOC automatically throttles a virtual machine I/O bandwidth when latency threshold is exceeded.

 

6. What are two features of vSphere 6.x that help address the availability challenges any organization faces?

Options are:

A.              Host profiles

B.              VM templates

C.              High availability

D.              Fault tolerance

Ans is: High Availability

Fault tolerance

Reason is: High Availability or HA is one of the widely used vSphere cluster features to improve application availability. In the event of host failure, HA automatically detects the failure and evacuates VMs from the failure host and restarts it back on the available node of the cluster. By default, vSphere HA failure detection time is 15 sec.

vSphere Fault Tolerance or FT is another vSphere cluster feature which provides continuous availability to virtual machines –eliminating downtime and disruption- even in the event of a complete host failure. FT creates an exact replica of virtual machine to another host that can take over at the time of failure. FT provides ZERO DOWNTIME.

 

7. Which VLAN configuration requires physical switch connectivity to be defined as an access port?

Options are:

A.              Private vLAN

B.              External switch tagging

C.              Virtual switch tagging

D.              Virtual guest tagging

 

Ans is: External Switch tagging

 

Reason is: In external switch tagging, vLAN tagging happens at physical switch level, because of which switch ports are configured as access ports. Whereas in VST and VGT, physical switch ports need to be configured as Trunk ports because packets are tagged at virtual switch level or guest OS level.

 

8. Which two network failure detection options are available when using a vsphere standard switch?

 

Options are:

A.              Fixed with preferred path

B.              Link status only

C.              Beacon probing

D.              Most recently used.

Ans are: 

B. Link status only

C. Beacon probing

Reason why:  Link status only algorithm can detect immediate link failure for ex. NIC Down, Switch port Disable/Block, Switch Reboot etc.

Beacon probing Algorithm can detect upstream link and switch failures as well. It sends and listens for beacon probe packets in all physical NICs in a team.

 

9. An Administrator is migrating a powered on virtual machine. Which option should be selected to perform storage vMotion of the VM?

 

Options are:

A.              Change storage only

B.              Change Compute resource only

C.              Change both compute resource and storage

D.              All of the above

Ans is: Change storage only

Reason is: Storage vMotion is used to migrate virtual machine disk files from one Datastore to another with NO downtime for VM or No service disruption for end users.

SvMotion is used for storage maintenance activity or redistributing virtual machine disks to different storage volumes to balance capacity or improve performance.

10. Why would a vSphere administrator configure resource “SHARES” for a virtual machine?

Options are: 

A.              To prioritize access to a resource during contention 

B.              To guarantee access to a resource during contention

C.              To prioritize access to a resource at all times

D.              To guarantee access to a resource at all times

Ans is: 

A.              To prioritize access to a resource during contention 

Reason is: Shares specify the relative priority of a virtual machine. If a virtual machine has twice as many shares of resource as another vm. It is entitled to consume twice as much of that resource.

Shares prioritize cluster resource allocation only when available capacity is not able to meet the demands of resource consumers.

 

11. What two files are created when the TAKE SNAPSHOT operation is executed?

Options are:

A.              *.delta.vmdk

B.              *.nvram

C.              *.vmss

D.              *.vmsn

 

Ans are: 

 

*.delta.vmdk

*.vmsn

 

Reason is:  A VMware Snapshot is a copy of the virtual machine’s disk file and memory state at any given point of time.

 

*.delta.vmdk

File represents the difference between the current state of the virtual disk and the state that existed at the time that the previous snapshot was taken.