vSphere Infrastructure & Networking Flashcards

Which vSphere feature monitors ESXi host and virtual machine performance and automatically balances workloads across hosts in a cluster?

Answer: vSphere DRS

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) monitors resource utilization and automatically migrates VMs via vMotion to balance workloads.

In a vSphere environment, what does the term 'overcommitment' refer to in the context of memory?

Answer: Allocating more memory to VMs than is physically available on the host

Memory overcommitment occurs when the total memory allocated to all VMs on a host exceeds the physical RAM available, relying on VMware's memory management techniques.

Which ESXi resource management construct sets a guaranteed minimum amount of CPU or memory that a virtual machine will always receive?

Answer: Reservation

A reservation guarantees that a specified amount of CPU (MHz) or memory (MB) is always available to a virtual machine, regardless of host contention.

What is the role of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) in a vSphere environment?

Answer: It provides centralized management, automation, and orchestration of ESXi hosts and VMs

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is the central management platform for vSphere, enabling administration of ESXi hosts, VMs, clusters, and policies from a single interface.

Which vSphere technology provides CPU-level isolation by creating separate execution environments for virtual machines?

Answer: Hardware Virtualization (HV) with VT-x/AMD-V

Intel VT-x and AMD-V hardware virtualization extensions enable the VMkernel to create isolated virtual CPU environments with near-native performance.

In vSphere DRS, what does an 'aggressive' migration threshold mean?

Answer: DRS will apply even small performance improvements by migrating VMs frequently

An aggressive DRS threshold (level 5) triggers migrations for even minor load imbalances, prioritizing performance optimization over migration overhead.