DEA-1TT5 Virtualization and Cloud Storage 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is a 'virtual machine' (VM) in the context of compute virtualization?
- A physical server dedicated to running one application
- A software-based emulation of a computer that runs an operating system and applications as if it were a physical machine (Correct answer)
- A remote desktop session on a shared server
- A containerized application running on Linux
Correct answer: A software-based emulation of a computer that runs an operating system and applications as if it were a physical machine
A virtual machine is a complete software abstraction of a physical computer, including virtual CPU, memory, storage, and network interfaces, managed by a hypervisor on a physical host.
Question 2: What storage format does VMware use to store virtual machine disk data?
- VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
- VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) (Correct answer)
- VHDX (Virtual Hard Disk Extended)
- RAW disk image
Correct answer: VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk)
VMware uses the VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) format to store the contents of a VM's virtual disk, which can be stored on a datastore backed by SAN, NAS, or local storage.
Question 3: What is a 'datastore' in VMware vSphere?
- A physical SAN array connected to ESXi hosts
- A logical storage container (VMFS volume or NFS mount) used to store VM files on ESXi hosts (Correct answer)
- The vSphere management database
- A dedicated storage pool reserved for backup operations
Correct answer: A logical storage container (VMFS volume or NFS mount) used to store VM files on ESXi hosts
A vSphere datastore is a logical storage unit (formatted as VMFS block storage or mounted as NFS) that ESXi hosts use to store VM configuration files, VMDKs, snapshots, and templates.
Question 4: What is 'vMotion' and what storage requirement does it have?
- A VMware tool for migrating VMs, requiring VM storage to be on shared storage accessible by both source and destination hosts (Correct answer)
- A network load balancing feature for VMs
- A VMware snapshot tool for backup operations
- A tool for cloning VMs to new datastores
Correct answer: A VMware tool for migrating VMs, requiring VM storage to be on shared storage accessible by both source and destination hosts
vMotion migrates running VMs between ESXi hosts with zero downtime, requiring the VM's storage to reside on shared storage (SAN or NAS) accessible by both the source and destination hosts.
Question 5: In cloud storage, what is 'object storage' most appropriate for?
- High-performance databases requiring low-latency block access
- Storing large volumes of unstructured data such as media files, backups, and static content at scale (Correct answer)
- Running virtual machine disk images in a hypervisor
- Providing shared file system access to compute instances
Correct answer: Storing large volumes of unstructured data such as media files, backups, and static content at scale
Object storage excels at storing massive amounts of unstructured data (images, videos, backups, logs) using simple REST APIs, offering high scalability and durability at low cost.
Question 6: What is 'storage vMotion' in VMware vSphere?
- Moving a VM's compute workload between hosts while it runs
- Migrating a running VM's disk files from one datastore to another without powering it off (Correct answer)
- Backing up VM snapshots to remote storage
- Replicating VM data to a disaster recovery site
Correct answer: Migrating a running VM's disk files from one datastore to another without powering it off
Storage vMotion migrates a running VM's VMDKs from one datastore to another with zero downtime, enabling storage maintenance, load balancing, and tiering without impacting applications.
DEA-1TT5 Virtualization and Cloud Storage 1
What is a 'virtual machine' (VM) in the context of compute virtualization?