VCA vSphere High Availability & Fault Tolerance 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is VM Component Protection (VMCP) in vSphere HA?
- Encryption of VM files stored on shared datastores
- A feature that responds to storage connectivity failures by restarting affected VMs (Correct answer)
- A method for protecting VMs from memory errors
- A backup policy that protects VM configuration files
Correct answer: A feature that responds to storage connectivity failures by restarting affected VMs
VMCP detects storage accessibility failures (APD and PDL) and can restart affected VMs on hosts with healthy storage access, extending HA protection to storage failures.
Question 2: What does the 'Host Isolation Response' setting control in vSphere HA?
- How ESXi responds when it detects unauthorized access attempts
- What happens to VMs on a host that cannot communicate with the HA master (Correct answer)
- How the cluster handles hosts with failed network adapters
- The maximum time before HA declares a host as permanently failed
Correct answer: What happens to VMs on a host that cannot communicate with the HA master
The Host Isolation Response determines whether VMs on a network-isolated host are left running, powered off, or shut down to prevent split-brain scenarios in the cluster.
Question 3: What is required for vSphere Fault Tolerance to function?
- Shared NFS storage and at least two network adapters
- A dedicated FT logging network, vSphere HA enabled, and compatible hardware (Correct answer)
- vSphere DRS in fully automated mode and enterprise licensing
- A dedicated vCenter Server instance for FT management
Correct answer: A dedicated FT logging network, vSphere HA enabled, and compatible hardware
FT requires a dedicated FT logging network for synchronization traffic, vSphere HA to be enabled on the cluster, and hardware that supports hardware virtualization and CPU features.
Question 4: What is a vSphere HA 'VM restart priority' setting used for?
- Controlling the order in which VMs are migrated during DRS balancing
- Determining which VMs get restarted first after an HA failover event (Correct answer)
- Setting CPU scheduling priority for VMs during normal operation
- Defining which VMs are backed up first during snapshot operations
Correct answer: Determining which VMs get restarted first after an HA failover event
VM restart priority determines the order in which HA restarts virtual machines after a host failure, ensuring critical VMs like domain controllers start before less important workloads.
Question 5: What minimum number of ESXi hosts are required to form a vSphere HA cluster?
- 1 host
- 2 hosts (Correct answer)
- 3 hosts
- 4 hosts
Correct answer: 2 hosts
A vSphere HA cluster requires a minimum of 2 ESXi hosts so that if one fails, the surviving host can restart the VMs from the failed host.
Question 6: What is 'proactive HA' in vSphere?
- Automatically migrating VMs away from a degraded host before it fails (Correct answer)
- Restarting VMs faster after a failure by pre-warming memory on spare hosts
- Predicting future storage failures based on SMART data
- Automatically increasing VM resources before workload peaks
Correct answer: Automatically migrating VMs away from a degraded host before it fails
Proactive HA monitors hardware health sensors and migrates VMs away from hosts showing signs of degradation before they fully fail, reducing unexpected downtime.
VCA vSphere High Availability & Fault Tolerance 2
What is VM Component Protection (VMCP) in vSphere HA?