VCA Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield VCA facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What is the difference between a full clone and a linked clone in vSphere? → Full clones are independent copies; linked clones share the parent snapshot's disk
2. What is the role of vSphere DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)? → To monitor and allocate resources to virtual machines based on demand.
3. What is an HA admission control policy used for? → Ensuring the cluster retains enough capacity to restart VMs after a host failure
4. What is the function of vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)? → To automatically balance workloads based on resource usage.
5. What does VMware Tanzu provide in the vSphere ecosystem? → Kubernetes and container management capabilities integrated with vSphere infrastructure
6. What is a key feature of vSphere Storage I/O Control (SIOC)? → It controls I/O throughput to datastores and prioritizes virtual machine access.
7. What is vSphere HA (High Availability) designed to do? → It automatically restarts virtual machines on other hosts in case of a failure.
8. What is the purpose of configuring VM dependencies in vSphere HA? → Ensuring that dependent VMs restart in the correct order after an HA event
9. What is the role of vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) in network management? → It enables network management across multiple ESXi hosts for consistency and scalability.
10. What is a vSphere HA 'VM restart priority' setting used for? → Determining which VMs get restarted first after an HA failover event
11. What is the role of the vSphere Content Library? → Centralizing and sharing VM templates, OVFs, and ISO files across vCenter instances
12. How does vSphere licensing work? → Licensing is based on the number of processors or cores in the host.
13. What is VM Component Protection (VMCP) in vSphere HA? → A feature that responds to storage connectivity failures by restarting affected VMs
14. What is the function of vSphere vCenter Update Manager? → To automate the patch management for ESXi hosts and virtual machines.
15. What does VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) protect against? → Unplanned ESXi host failures by automatically restarting VMs on other cluster hosts
16. What is a 'Cluster in a Box' configuration in vSphere? → A vSphere cluster running on a single physical server using nested virtualization
17. What minimum number of ESXi hosts are required to form a vSphere HA cluster? → 2 hosts
18. What is the purpose of a VMkernel port in vSphere networking? → It facilitates the management and network services for ESXi hosts.
19. Which condition would PREVENT a vMotion from succeeding? → The VM has a CD/DVD drive connected to a host-local ISO file
20. What is vSphere vMotion used for? → Migrating a running VM from one ESXi host to another with zero downtime
21. What is the recommended best practice for the number of hosts to tolerate in a vSphere HA cluster? → Set the tolerated host failures based on the number of hosts and business requirements
22. What is the vSphere permission model based on? → Roles assigned to users or groups on vSphere objects in the inventory hierarchy
23. In vSphere, what is a 'resource pool' used for? → Hierarchically organizing VMs and allocating CPU/memory shares and limits
24. What does vSphere vMotion enable? → It allows live migration of virtual machines across hosts with no downtime.
25. Which vSphere feature allows you to deploy multiple VMs quickly from a master template? → VM template
26. What is required for vSphere Fault Tolerance to function? → A dedicated FT logging network, vSphere HA enabled, and compatible hardware
27. What happens to the VM's MAC address during a vMotion migration? → The MAC address is preserved — it stays the same on the destination host
28. What does VCP-DCV stand for in VMware certification tracks? → VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization
29. What is 'proactive HA' in vSphere? → Automatically migrating VMs away from a degraded host before it fails
30. What is the function of vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT)? → To enable real-time failover for virtual machines in case of host failure.