Chapters 1 - 3 Flashcards
Which products are licensed features within the VMware vSphere suite?
Licensed features in the VMware vSphere suite are Virtual SMP, vMotion, Storage vMotion, vSphere DRS, vSphere HA, and vSphere FT/SMP-FT, to name a few.
Which two features of VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter Server together aim to reduce or eliminate downtime due to unplanned hardware failures
vSphere HA and vSphere FT/SMP-FT are designed to reduce (vSphere HA) and eliminate (vSphere FT) the downtime resulting from unplanned hardware failures.
Name two storage-related features that were introduced in vSphere 5.5
VSAN and vFRC are both storage-related features that were new with vSphere 5.5 and were not present in earlier releases.
Name three features that are supported only when using vCenter Server along with ESXi
All of the following features are available only with vCenter Server: vSphere vMotion, Storage vMotion, vSphere DRS, Storage DRS, vSphere HA, vSphere FT/SMP-FT, SIOC, and NIOC.
Name two features that are supported without vCenter Server but with a licensed installation of ESXi.
Features that are supported by VMware ESXi without vCenter Server include core virtualization features like virtualized networking, virtualized storage, vSphere vSMP, and resource allocation controls.
One of the administrators on your team asked whether he should install Windows Server on the new servers you purchased for ESXi. What should you tell him, and why?
VMware ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor that does not require the installation of a general-purpose host operating system. Therefore, it’s unnecessary to install Windows Server on the equipment that was purchased for ESXi.
You have some older servers onto which you’d like to deploy ESXi. They aren’t on the Compatibility Guide. Will they work with ESXi?
They might, but they won’t be fully supported by VMware. In all likelihood, the CPUs in these older servers don’t support some of the hardware virtualization extensions or don’t support 64-bit operation, both of which would directly impact the ability of ESXi to run on that hardware. You should choose only hardware that is on the Compatibility Guide.
Name three areas of networking that must be considered in a vSphere design.
Among other things, networking areas that must be considered include VLAN support, link aggregation, network speed (1 Gbps or 10 Gbps), load-balancing algorithms, and the number of NICs and network ports required.
What are some of the different types of storage that ESXi can be installed on?
By far the most common way to boot ESXi is the Local/Direct attached disks, but also supported are USB storage, an isolated SAN boot LUN, and using iSCSI.
Your manager asks you to provide him with a copy of the unattended installation script that you will be using when you roll out ESXi using vSphere Auto Deploy. Is this something you can give him?
No. When using vSphere Auto Deploy, there is no installation script. The vSphere Auto Deploy server streams an ESXi image to the physical host as it boots up. Redeployment of an ESXi host with vSphere Auto Deploy can be as simple as a reboot.
Name two advantages and two disadvantages of using vSphere Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts.
Some advantages include fast provisioning, fast reprovisioning, and the ability to quickly incorporate new ESXi images or updates into the provisioning process. Some disadvantages include additional complexity and dependency on additional infrastructure.
You’ve installed ESXi on your server, but the welcome web page is inaccessible, and the server doesn’t respond to a ping. What could be the problem?
More than likely, the wrong NIC was selected for use with the management network or the incorrect VLAN was selected. You’ll need to use the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) directly at the physical console of the ESXi host in order to reconfigure the management network and restore network connectivity.
List two ways by which you can install the vSphere Desktop Client.
You can download it from the Welcome To vSphere web page on a vCenter Server instance or you can install it from the vCenter Server installation media. You can also download the vSphere Desktop Client from VMware’s website.
Specifically with regard to authentication, what are three key advantages of using vCenter Server?
First, vCenter Server centralizes the authentication so that user accounts don’t have to be managed on a per-host basis.
Second, vCenter Server eliminates the need to share the root password for hosts or to use complex configurations to allow administrators to perform tasks on the hosts.
Third, vCenter Server brings role-based administration for the granular management of hosts and VMs while also providing additional roles above and beyond what stand-alone ESXi offers.
What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of running vCenter Server as a VM?
Some of the advantages include the ability to easily clone the VM for backup or disaster-recovery purposes, the ability to take snapshots to protect against data loss or data corruption, and the ability to leverage features such as vMotion or Storage vMotion. Some of the disadvantages include the inability to cold-clone the vCenter Server VM, cold-migrate the vCenter Server VM (because vCenter needs to be online to clone or migrate VMs), or edit the virtual hardware of the vCenter Server VM. It can also add additional recovery complexity if an outage occurs on the infrastructure running the vCenter Server VM.
