Tag: VMware

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.8 – Differentiate between VDS and VSS

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • You will need to know the features set of both type of switch
    • Standard and Distributed switch
    • Select the appropriate switch given a scenario
    • Understand level of effort in administration
  • Don’t let questions mislead you on feature set
    • Standard switches have significant functionality
  • Learn what the standards actually mean
    • IEEE 802.1q / IEEE 802.3ad
  • Also be able to differentiate discovery protocols
    • When would you use LLDP or CDP?
    • Does that affect switch choice?
  • Be able to determine when a feature is appropriate
    • Health check
    • Beacon probing – detect uplink failure
    • Notify switches – switch cache mac address
    • Roll back
    • Traffic shaping
    • NIOC
  • Questions on NIC teaming rules are possible
  • Can you draw out how traffic flows given each load balancing algorithm is used?
    • Route based on originating virtual port
    • Route based on source MAC hash
    • Route based on source IP hash
    • Route based on physical NIC load
    • Explicit failover order

Reference:

vSphere Networking Guide pdf – Chapter 8 – Networking Policies

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.7 – Describe and identify resource pools and use cases

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • Resource management is an essential skills for passing VCP-DCV
    • What resource are you being asked to control?
    • Different resources have different controls
  • Know the resource pool settings
    • You need to be able to select the right settings for a scenario
    • Proportional share allocation
  • Why use resource pools

Reference:

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.9 – Describe the purpose of cluster and the features it provides

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • Be aware of additional features of both HA and DRS
    • HA provides option to enable VM fault tolerance
    • HA provides optional VM Component Protection
    • DRS rules control placement (affinity)
    • DRS provides optional DPM
  • Make sure you have read and experimented with admission control
    • Remember this is a gating of VM power on operations
    • What is slot size? Different from %?
  • Ultimately DRS is automating vMotion
    • So what stops vMotion from working?
    • Incompatible CPUs!
  • Ensure you have looked at Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
    • Can you explain CPU masking?
    • Can you pick the appropriate use-case from implementation of either?
  • You need to have awareness of vMotion Encryption

Reference:

vSphere Availability Guide pdf – Chapter 2 – Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters

vSphere Resource Management Guide pdf

  • Chapter 10 – Managing Resource Pools
  • Chapter 11 – Creating a DRS Cluster

vSphere Security Guide pdf – Chapter 6 – Encrypted vSphere vMotion

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.10 – Describe virtual machine (VM) file structure

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • You need to know the files that make up a VM and what they do
    • VMX, VMDK, VSWP, VMSD, VMSN, etc
  • You need to know their behaviour
    • What gets created if missing?
    • What is naming convention of files?
    • What is the snapshot naming behaviour?
    • Any differences between VMFS5 and VMFS6?
    • How do resources reservation affects files?
  • You should also be familiar with virtual disk types
  • Try in your home lab to create VMs with
    • Thin provisioned disk
    • Thick provisioned disk
    • Eager zero thick provisioned disk
    • Could you convert from one disk type to another? How exactly?
  • Get to a vSphere host command line and look at what gets created
    • Nothin like doing to lock this into your memory!

Reference: vSphere ESXi vCenter-Server 67 Virtual Machine Admin Guide pdf

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.6 – Describe and differentiate among vSphere, HA, DRS, and SDRS functionality

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • HA has come a long way, don’t rely on legacy knowledge of HA to meet objective
  • Learn the newer features, pre-reqs and limitations of:
    • Proactive HA
    • Orchestrated Restart
    • Fault Tolerance (FT) vSMP
  • HA can’t work around everything
    • For example datastore connectivity loss or unable to satisfy reservation
  • Ensure you can explain the basic modes of DRS
    • Disable, Manual, Partial, Full Automated, per-VM
  • DRS has come a long way
    • Predictive DRS
    • Limitations of vMotion have been overcome
  • What are the vMotion pre-reqs?
    • CPU compatibility
    • Network configuration
    • Compatible virtual hardware
  • What virtual hardware options can and cannot be migrated with DRS?
  • SDRS often gets overlooked
    • Remember it has 2 dimensions to optimization
      • Space utilization & I/O latency
      • What are you being asked in the question?

Reference: 

vSphere Availability Guide pdf

vSphere Resource Guide pdf

Brian Graf Blog – https://www.brianjgraf.com/2016/10/17/vsphere-6-5-vsphere-ha-whats-new-part-3-orchestrated-restart/

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.5 – Manage vCenter inventory efficiently

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • What is efficient?
    • Think about vCenter inventory hierarchy and its organization
    • Parents/children/siblings
  • What constructs do you have available to you to organize objects?
    • Datacenter object
    • Cluster object
    • Folder object
    • Resource pool
    • vApp
  • Be aware of dependency
    • Can you create a cluster before a datacenter?
    • Can you put a datacenter in a folder?
    • Try these simple operations in your test lab
  • Are there any constraints on inventory object creation?
    • Resource pools and vApps have scope
  • Can you scale beyond a vCenter?

Reference:

vCenter Server and Host Management Guide pdf – chapter 8 – Organizing the inventory

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.4 – Differentiate between NIOC and SIOC

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • This objective is about managing noisy neighbors!
    • NIOC for network & SIOC for storage
  • You need to demonstrate understanding of
    • What dimensions you can control and applied-to
    • Limitations of service
    • Pre-reqs for implementation
  • Foundation knowledge of proportional share allocation is expected
    • What does low, medium & high mean?
    • What happens when you use numbers instead of labels?
    • How does the power on of another VM affect share allocation?

Reference:

vSphere Resource Management Guide pdf – Chapter 9-Managing Storage I/o Resources

vSphere Networking Guide pdf – Chapter 11 – vSphere Network I/O Control

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.3 – Describe storage types for vSphere

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • Ensure you are clear on the differences between
    • Block (LUN/vVOL)
    • File access
    • vSAN
  • Read storage questions slowly and carefully
    • Are you being asked about VMs and their virtual hard disks?
    • Are you being asked about what storage vSphere can address?
  • VMware loves acronyms
    • For this objective, you need to learn lots of them
  • For example
    • Can you differentiate SIOC from VAIO?
    • Do you know if RDM is possible with NFS?
    • Happy with VASA providers?

Reference: vSphere 6.7 Storage Guide

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.2 – Identify vCenter high availability (HA) requirements

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • Be very clear that this is vCenter availability management NOT host
  • Learn the topology of a vCenter HA deployment
    • Nodes
    • Roles of nodes
    • What can and can’t they do? Particularly witness
  • Set up vCenter HA in your lab, so much more interesting study than just reading
    • Easy to enable/disable
  • Make sure you read the vCenter HA section of the vSphere Availability Guide

Reference: vSphere 6.7 Availability Guide pdf – Chapter 4 – vCenter High Availability

VMware VCP 6.7-DCV – Objective 1.1 – Identify the pre-requisites and components for vSphere Implementation

by Samuel Mitchell, posted in VMware

The following notes will assist you to prepare for this objective:

  • Know your vSphere technologies and what they do and what they don’t
    • HA
    • DRS
    • FT
    • vCenter HA
    • vSAN
  • Don’t let questions mislead you on risks mitigated
    • For example does DRS maintain availability?
  • Learn the vSphere 6.7 resource pre-reqs
    • Minimum CPU & RAM
    • Why do you need the HCL?
  • Think about post-install procedures
    • Logging, scratch, dump collection
    • Authentication
  • Know your way around VAMI
    • Adding syslog, adding NTP, DNS settings

Reference: vSphere ESXi 672 Installation Setup Guide.pdf – Chapter 5

vCenter Server Installation and Setup pdf = Chapter 2