cool blog

o NPIV support is subject to the following limitations: o NPIV must be enabled on the SAN switch. o NPIV is supported only for VMs with RDM disks. o The physical HBAs on the 220 702 ESX host must have access to a LUN using its WWNs in order for any VMs on that host to have access to that LUN using their NPIV WWNs. o The physical HBAs on the ESX host must support NPIV. o Each VMcan have up to 4 virtual ports. NPIV-enabled VMs are assigned exactly 4 NPIV-related WWNs. Can utilize up to 4 physical HBAs for NPIV purposes. o A VM with WWNs that are already in use on the storage network is prevented from powering on. o While hyperthreading does not double the performance of a system, it can increase performance by better utilizing idle resources. o The advanced CPU settings are useful only for fine-grained tweaking of critical VMs. o NUMA memory node affinity enables fine-grained control over how VM memory is distributed to host physical memory. o Specify nodes to be used for future memory allocations only if you have also specified CPU affinity. o The following NIC types are supported: vNIC Description Flexible Supported on VMs that were created on ESX Server 3.0 or greater and that run 32-bit guest operating systems. The Flexible adapter functions as a vlance adapter if VMware Tools is not installed in the VM and as a vmxnet driver if VMware Tools is installed in the VM. e1000 Emulates the functioning of an E1000 network card. It is the default adapter type for VMs that run 64-bit guest operating systems. Enhanced vmxnet An upgraded version of the vmxnet device with enhanced performance. It requires that VMware Tools be installed in the VM. vmxnet 3 Next generation vmxnet device with enhanced performance and enhanced networking features. It requires that VMware Tools be installed in the VM, and is available only on VMs with hardware version 7 and greater. o Independent disks are not affected by snapshots. o Two modes for independent disks: o Persistent – The disk operates normally except that changes to the disk are permanent even if the VM is reverted to a snapshot. o Nonpersistent – The disk appears to operate normally, but whenever the VM is powered off or reverted to a snapshot, the contents of the disk return to their original state. All later changes are discarded. o VMDirectPath I/O allows a guest operating system on a VM to directly access physical PCI and PCIe devices connected to a host. Each VM can be connected to up to two PCI devices. PCI devices connected to a host can be marked as available for passthrough from the Hardware Advanced Settings in the Configuration tab for the host. o Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are high-performance storage adapters that can provide greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. PVSCSI adapters are best suited for environments, especially SAN environments, running I/O-intensive applications. PVSCSI adapters are not suited for DAS environments. o Hardware requirements for 9L0-403 customizing the guest operating system: o Must reside on a disk attached as SCSI 0:0 node in the VM configuration. o If a VM has mixed IDE and SCSI disks, the first IDE disk is considered the boot disk, and vCenter Server passes it to the customizer. o If the new VM encounters customization errors while it is booting o Customization errors are logged to (Windows guest) %WINDIR%tempvmware-imc or (Linux guest) /var/log/vmware/customization.log. o When you migrate a suspended VM, the new host for the VM must meet CPU compatibility requirements, because the VM must resume executing instructions on the new host. o Use of Jumbo Frames is recommended for best VMotion performance. o Some restrictions apply when migrating VMs with snapshots. You cannot migrate a virtual machine with snapshots with Storage VMotion. o You can migrate as long as the VM is being migrated to a new host without moving its configuration file or disks (the VM must reside on shared storage accessible to both hosts). o Reverting to a snapshot after migration with VMotion might cause the VM to fail, because the migration wizard cannot verify the compatibility of the VM state in the snapshot with the destination host. o During a migration with Storage VMotion, you can transform virtual disks from thick-provisioned to thin or from thin-provisioned to thick. o Storage VMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations: o Virtual machines with snapshots cannot be migrated using Storage VMotion. o Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). For virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file or convert to thick-provisioned or thinprovisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. For physical compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only. o Must have a license that includes Storage VMotion. o ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts must be 9L0-510 licensed and configured for VMotion. ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later hosts do not require VMotion configuration in order to perform migration with Storage VMotion. o A particular host can be involved in up to two migrations with VMotion or Storage VMotion at one time.

o The vSphere Client validates an OVF file before importing it. o A vApp is a container, like a resource pool and can contain one or more VMs. A vApp can power on and power off, and can also be cloned. o The vApp metadata resides in the vCenter Server's database o You can add an object, 220 701 such as a VM or another vApp, to an existing vApp. o An IP pool is a network configuration that is assigned to a network used by a vApp. The vApp can then leverage vCenter Server to automatically provide an IP configuration to its VMs. o Each application within the service will be powered on according to how the startup order is set. When powering on a vApp within a DRS cluster in manual mode, no DRS recommendations are generated for VM placements. The power on operation performs as if DRS is run in a semi-automatic or automatic mode for the initial placements of the VMs. This does not affect VMotion recommendations. Recommendations for individual powering on and powering off of VMs are also generated for vApps that are running o A VM’s name can be up to 80 characters long. Names are case insensitive. o Virtual machine version 4 — Compatible with ESX 3.0 and greater hosts and VMware Server 1.0 and greater hosts. o Virtual machine version 7 — Compatible with ESX 4.0 and greater hosts. Provides greater VM functionality. o Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are high-performance storage adapters that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. o Best suited for high performance storage environments. o Not suited for DAS environments. VMware recommends that you create a primary adapter (LSI Logic by default) for use with a disk that will host the system software (boot disk) and a separate PVSCSI adapter for the disk that will store user data, such as a database. o Paravirtual SCSI adapters are available for VMs running hardware version 7 and greater. They are supported on the following guest operating systems: o Windows Server 2008 o Windows Server 2003 o Red Hat Linux (RHEL) 5 o Features not supported with Paravirtual SCSI adapters: o Boot disks o Record/Replay o Fault Tolerance o MSCS Clustering o SCSI controller types: o BusLogic Parallel o LSI Logic SAS o LSI Logic Parallel o VMware Paravirtual o Thin Provisioned Format – Use 220 702 this format to save storage space. If a virtual disk supports clustering solutions such as Fault Tolerance, you cannot make the disk thin. You can manually convert the thin disk into thick. o Thick Format – This is the default virtual disk format. It is not possible to convert the thick disk into thin. (EDIT: you can via Storage VMotion) o Automatic VMware Tools upgrade is not supported for VMs with Solaris or Netware guest operating systems. o If you are using a WYSE thin client device to conduct remote desktop sessions using VMware VDI, installing WYSE Multimedia Support in the guest operating system improves the performance of streaming video. WYSE Multimedia Support is supported on the Windows 2003 and Windows XP guest operating systems only. WYSE Multimedia Support is installed as part of a VMware Tools installation or upgrade. o Virtual machines with hardware versions lower than 4 can run on ESX4 hosts but have reduced performance and capabilities. In particular, you cannot add or remove virtual devices on VMs with hardware versions lower than 4 when they reside on an ESX4 host. o Virtual Machine Hardware Versions: Host Version 7 Version 4 Version 3 Compatible with vCenter Server version ESX/ESXi 4.x create, edit, run create, edit, run run vCenter Server 4.x ESX Server 3.x – create, edit, run run VirtualCenter Server 2.x and higher ESX Server 2.x – – create, edit, run VirtualCenter Server 1.x and higher o SCSI Bus Sharing list: Option Description None Virtual disks cannot be shared by other VMs. Virtual Virtual disks can be shared by VMs on same server. Physical Virtual disks can be shared by VMs on any server. o Memory/CPU Hotplug – VMware Tools must be installed for hotplug functionality to work properly. o VMI – A paravirtualization standard that enables improved performance for VMs capable of utilizing it. o Enabling paravirtualization utilizes one of the VM’s six virtual PCI slots o A VM with paravirtualization enabled and that is powered off can be moved manually to a host that does not support paravirtualization. However, this can result in reduced performance. o N-port ID virtualization (NPIV) – 220 701 Provides the ability to share a single physical Fibre Channel HBA port among multiple virtual ports, each with unique identifiers. This allows control over VMaccess to LUNs on a per-VMbasis.

o ESX/ESXi System Logs Component Location ESX Server 2.x Service log /var/log/vmware/vmware-serverd.log ESX Server 3.x or ESX Service log /var/log/vmware/hostd.log vSphere Client Agent 640 802 Dumps log /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log Virtual Machine Kernel Core file /root/vmkernel-core. and /root/vmkernel-log. present after rebooting Syslog log /var/log/messages Service Console Availability report /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Messages /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Alerts & Availability report /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Warning /var/log/vmkwarning Virtual Machine log file The same directory as the .vmx file for the VM. o vSphere Client System Logs Component Location vSphere Client Installation log Temp directory on the vSphere Client machine. e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsTempvmmsi.log vSphere Client Service log vpx directory in the Application Data directory on the vSphere Client machine. e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication Data vpxviclientx. log x(=0, 1, ... 9) o VMware Server System Logs Component Operating System Location VM Console log Windows Temp directory e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal Settings Tempvmware--.log Linux Temp directory e.g.: /tmp/vmware-/ui-.log VM log Windows & Linux vmware.log Located in the same directory as the VM .vmx file. VM Event log Windows C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Virtual Infrastructure vmserverdRooteventlogvent- .vmx.log Linux /var/log/vmware/event-.vmx.log VM Conf file Windows .vmx Located in the folder where VMs are stored. Linux .vmx Located in the folder where VMs are stored. o All ESX/ESXi hosts run a syslog service (syslogd). o ESXi hosts can use the vSphere Client or the vSphere CLI command vicfg-syslog o Cannot use the vSphere Client or vicfg-syslog to configure syslog behavior for an ESX host. To configure syslog for an ESX host, you must edit the /etc/syslog.conf file. o Libraries – Central repositories 640-802 for VM provisioning media e.g. VM templates, ISO images, floppy images, VMDK files, guest customization files. o Guided Consolidation ports Port Protocol Service Description MS Windows 135 TCP/UDP Loc-srv/epmap Microsoft DCE Locator service (End-point Mapper). DHCP, DNS & WINS Server 137 TCP/UDP Netbios-ns NetBIOS names service. WINS & DNS Server 138 TCP/UDP Netbios-dgm NetBIOS datagram 139 TCP/UDP Netbios-ssn NetBIOS Session Windows File and Printer sharing. 445 TCP/UDP DNS DNS Direct Hosting port. Active Directory o Guided Consolidation can be installed together with vCenter Server, or can be installed on a separate host. For best performance, install Guided Consolidation on a separate host. It includes the following services: o vCenter Collector Service – Discovers domains and systems within domains. Collects performance data on those systems. o vCenter Provider Service – Helper service to the Collector Service. Communicates with target systems and passes the data back. o vCenter Guided Consolidation – Coordinates all communication among Guided Consolidation components. o You can analyze up to 100 systems simultaneously. o The following formula is used to resize converted disks: o amount of space used on physical disk * 1.25 = resultant virtual disk size o Virtual disks are set to a size of 4GB or larger. o Disconnecting a managed host does not remove it from vCenter Server; it temporarily suspends all monitoring activities performed by vCenter Server. o Deploying an OVF template is similar to deploying a VM from a template. However, you can deploy an OVF template from any local file system accessible from the vSphere 640 802 braindumps Client machine, or from a remote web server. o OVF advantages: o OVF files are compressed, allowing for faster download

o MAC Address Changes - the guest OS changes the MAC address of the adapter to anything other than what is in the .vmx o Forged Transmits - Outbound frames with a source MAC address that is different from the one set on the adapter are dropped. o Traffic shaping o Traffic shaping policy is defined by three characteristics: average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size. o ESX shapes outbound vcp 4 network traffic on vSwitches and both inbound and outbound traffic on a vNetwork Distributed Switch. o Peak bandwidth cannot be less than the specified average bandwidth. o NIC Teaming (Load balancing and failover) o Load Balancing 1. Route based on the originating port ID — Choose an uplink based on the virtual port where the traffic entered the virtual switch. 2. Route based on ip hash — Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source and destination IP addresses of each packet. 3. Route based on source MAC hash — Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet. 4. Use explicit failover order — Always use the highest order uplink from the list of Active adapters which passes failover detection criteria. o IP-based teaming requires that the physical switch be configured with etherchannel. For all other options, etherchannel should be disabled. o Incoming traffic is controlled by the load balancing policy on the physical switch o Network failover detection o Link Status only o Beacon probing - Do not use beacon probing with IP-hash load balancing. o Notify Switches - a notification is sent out over the network to update the lookup tables on physical switches. In almost all cases, this process is desirable for the lowest latency of failover occurrences and migrations with VMotion. Do not use this option when the virtual machines using the port group are using Microsoft Network Load Balancing in unicast mode. o Failback - determines how a physical adapter is returned to active duty after recovering from a failure. If failback is set to Yes (default), the adapter is returned to active duty immediately upon recovery. o Failover Order 1. Active Uplinks 2. Standby Uplinks 3. Unused Uplinks o When using IP-hash load balancing, do not configure standby uplinks. o VLAN - The VLAN policy allows virtual networks to join physical VLANs - vNetwork Distributed Switch only (dvPorts). o Port blocking policies - vNetwork Distributed Switch only (dvPorts). o VMware uses the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) 00:50:56 for manually generated addresses. You must set them in a virtual machine’s configuration file: vmware vcp 4 ethernet.addressType="static" o Jumbo frames must be enabled at the host level using the command-line interface to configure the MTU size for each vSwitch. o TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) is enabled on the VMkernel interface by default, but must be enabled at the virtual machine level. o To enable TSO at the virtual machine level, you must replace the existing vmxnet or flexible virtual network adapters with enhanced vmxnet virtual network adapters. This might result in a change in the MAC address of the virtual network adapter. o To check whether TSO is enabled on a particular VMkernel networking interface use the esxcfg-vmknic -l command. The list shows each TSO-enabled VMkernel interface with TSO MSS set to 65535. o If TSO is not enabled for a particular VMkernel interface, the only way to enable it is to delete the VMkernel interface and recreate the interface. o Jumbo frames up to 9kB (9000 bytes) are supported. o Use the vicfg-vswitch -m command to set the MTU size for the vSwitch. o Enabling jumbo frame support on a virtual machine requires an enhanced vmxnet adapter for that virtual machine. o NetQueue in ESX takes advantage of the capability of some network adapters to deliver network traffic to the system in multiple receive queues that can be processed separately. This allows processing to be scaled to multiple CPUs, improving receive-side networking performance. o NetQueue is enabled by default. o ESX supports a direct PCI device connection for virtual machines running on Intel Nehalem platforms. Each virtual machine can connect to up to 2 passthrough devices. o The following features are unavailable for virtual machines configured with VMDirectPath: o VMotion o Hot adding and removing of virtual devices o Suspend and resume o Record and replay o Fault tolerance o High availability o DRS (limited availability; the 640 802 mvirtual machine can be part of a cluster, but cannot migrate across hosts) o Software-initiated iSCSI is not available over 10GigE network adapters in ESX.

4. Assign each physical NIC to a port group and a vSwitch. 5. Use separate physical NICs to handle the different traffic streams, such as network packets generated by VMs, iSCSI protocols, VMotion tasks, and service console activities. 6. Ensure that the physical NIC vcp-410 capacity is large enough to handle the network traffic on that vSwitch. If the capacity is not enough, consider using a high-bandwidth physical NIC (10Gbps) or moving some VMs to a vSwitch with a lighter load or to a new vSwitch. 7. If packets are being dropped at the vSwitch port, increase the virtual network driver ring buffers where applicable. 8. Verify that the reported speed and duplex settings for the physical NIC match the hardware expectations and that the hardware is configured to run at its maximum capability. For example, verify that NICs with 1Gbps are not reset to 100Mbps because they are connected to an older switch. 9. Verify that all NICs are running in full duplex mode. Hardware connectivity issues might result in a NIC resetting itself to a lower speed or half duplex mode. 10. Use vNICs that are TSO-capable, and verify that TSO-Jumbo Frames are enabled where possible. o Tasks represent system activities that do not complete immediately, such as migrating a VM. o If you are logged in to a vCenter Server system that is part of a Connected Group, a column in the task list displays the name of the vCenter Server system on which the task was performed. Appendix A – Defined privileges Appendix B – Installing the MS sysprep tools Appendix C – Performance metrics ESX Configuration Guide o A vNetwork Distributed Switch acts as a single vSwitch across all associated hosts on a datacenter. This allows virtual machines to maintain consistent network configuration as they migrate across multiple hosts. A dvPort is a port on a vNetwork Distributed Switch. o The VMkernel TCP/IP networking stack supports iSCSI, NFS, and VMotion. Virtual machines run their own systems’ TCP/IP stacks and connect to the VMkernel at the Ethernet level through virtual switches. o TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO), allows a TCP/IP stack to emit very large frames (up to 64KB) even though the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the interface is smaller. The network adapter then separates the large frame into MTU-sized frames and prepends an adjusted copy of the initial TCP/IP headers. o The default number of logical ports for a vSwitch is 56. o Each uplink adapter associated with a vSwitch uses one port. o You can create a maximum of 127 vSwitches on a single host. (EDIT the current Maximums PDF says 248) o Maximum of 512 port groups on a single host. o For a port group to reach port groups located on other VLANs, the VLAN ID must be set to 4095. If you enter 4095, the port group can see traffic on any VLAN while leaving the VLAN tags intact. o VLAN ID is a number vmware vcp 410 between 1 and 4094. o ESX supports only NFS version 3 over TCP/IP. o You can create a maximum of 16 service console ports in ESX. o CDP advertisements typically occur once a minute. o dvPort group properties include: o Port Binding - when ports are assigned to virtual machines connected to this dvPort group. o Static binding - to assign a port to a virtual machine when the virtual machine is connected to the dvPort group. o Dynamic binding - to assign a port to a virtual machine the first time the virtual machine powers on after it is connected to the dvPort group. o Ephemeral - for no port binding. o Whether to allow live port moving. o Config reset at disconnect to discard per-port configurations when a dvPort is disconnected from a virtual machine. o Binding on host allowed to specify that when vCenter Server is down, ESX can assign a dvPort to a virtual machine. o Port name format to provide a template for assigning names to the dvPorts in this group. o Private VLANs are used to solve VLAN ID limitations. o A private VLAN is identified by its primary VLAN ID. A primary VLAN ID can have multiple secondary VLAN IDs associated with it. Primary VLANs are Promiscuous, so that ports on a private VLAN can communicate with ports configured as the primary VLAN. Ports on a secondary VLAN can be either: o Isolated - communicating only with promiscuous ports o Community - communicating with both promiscuous ports and other ports on the same secondary VLAN. o Only one VMotion and IP storage port group for each ESX host. o You can enable or disable IPv6 support on the host. o The following networking policies can be applied: o Security o Promiscuous Mode - In non-promiscuous vmware vcp 4 mode, a guest adapter listens only to traffic forwarded to own MAC address. In promiscuous mode, it can listen to all the frames. By default, guest adapters are set to non-promiscuous mode.

o By default, statistics are stored in the vCenter Server database for one year. You can increase this to three years. o You cannot view datastore metrics in the advanced charts. They are only available in the overview charts. o CPU Performance Enhancement Advice 1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on every VM on the host. 2. Compare the CPU usage Passed VCP410 value of a VM with the CPU usage of other VMs on the host or in the resource pool. The stacked bar chart on the host's Virtual Machine view shows the CPU usage for all VMs on the host. 3. Determine whether the high ready time for the VM resulted from its CPU usage time reaching the CPU limit setting. If so, increase the CPU limit on the VM. 4. Increase the CPU shares to give the VM more opportunities to run. The total ready time on the host might remain at the same level if the host system is constrained by CPU. If the host ready time doesn't decrease, set the CPU reservations for high-priority VMs to guarantee that they receive the required CPU cycles. 5. Increase the amount of memory allocated to the VM. This decreases disk and or network activity for applications that cache. This might lower disk I/O and reduce the need for the ESX/ESXi host to virtualize the hardware. Virtual machines with smaller resource allocations generally accumulate more CPU ready time. 6. Reduce the number of virtual CPUs on a VM to only the number required to execute the workload. For example, a single-threaded application on a four-way VM only benefits from a single vCPU. But the hypervisor's maintenance of the three idle vCPUs takes CPU cycles that could be used for other work. 7. If the host is not already in a DRS cluster, add it to one. If the host is in a DRS cluster, increase the number of hosts and migrate one or more VMs onto the new host. 8. Upgrade the physical CPUs or cores on the host if necessary. 9. Use the newest version of ESX/ESXi, and enable CPU-saving features such as TCP Segmentation Offload, large memory pages, and jumbo frames. o Memory Performance Enhancement Advice 1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each VM. The balloon driver is installed with VMware Tools and is critical to performance. 2. Verify that the balloon driver is enabled. The VMkernel regularly reclaims unused VM memory by ballooning and swapping. Generally, this does not impact VM performance. 3. Reduce the memory space on the VM, and correct the cache size if it is too large. This frees up memory for other VMs. 4. If the memory reservation of the VM is set to a value much higher than its active memory, decrease the reservation setting so that the VMkernel can reclaim the idle memory for other VMs on the host. 5. Migrate one or more VMs to a host in a DRS cluster. 6. Add physical memory to the host. o Disk I/O Performance Passed VCP 4 Enhancement Advice 1. Increase the VM memory. This should allow for more operating system caching, which can reduce I/O activity. Note that this may require you to also increase the host memory. Increasing memory might reduce the need to store data because databases can utilize system memory to cache data and avoid disk access. To verify that VMs have adequate memory, check swap statistics in the guest operating system. Increase the guest memory, but not to an extent that leads to excessive host memory swapping. Install VMware Tools so that memory ballooning can occur. 2. Defragment the file systems on all guests. 3. Disable antivirus on-demand scans on the VMDK and VMEM (backup of the VM’s paging file) files. 4. Use the vendor's array tools to determine the array performance statistics. When too many servers simultaneously access common elements on an array, the disks might have trouble keeping up. Consider array-side improvements to increase throughput. 5. Use Storage VMotion to migrate I/O-intensive VMs across multiple ESX/ESXi hosts. 6. Balance the disk load across all physical resources available. Spread heavily used storage across LUNs that are accessed by different adapters. Use separate queues for each adapter to improve disk efficiency. 7. Configure the HBAs and RAID controllers for optimal use. Verify that the queue depths and cache settings on the RAID controllers are adequate. If not, increase the number of outstanding disk requests for the VM by adjusting the Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding parameter. For more information, see the Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide. 8. For resource-intensive VMs, separate the VM's physical disk drive from the drive with the system page file. This alleviates disk spindle contention during periods of high use. 9. On systems with sizable RAM, disable memory trimming by adding the line MemTrimRate=0 to the VM's .VMX file. 10. If the combined disk I/O is higher than a single HBA capacity, use multipathing or multiple links. 11. For ESXi hosts, create virtual disks as preallocated. When you create a virtual disk for a guest operating system, select Allocate all disk space now. The performance degradation associated with reassigning additional disk space does not occur, and the disk is less likely to become fragmented. 12. Use the most current ESX/ESXi host hardware. o Networking Performance Enhancement Advice 1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each VM. 2. If possible, use vcp 410 vmxnet3 NIC drivers, which are available with VMware Tools. They are optimized for high performance. 3. If VMs running on the same ESX/ESXi host communicate with each other, connect them to the same vSwitch to avoid the cost of transferring packets over the physical network.

o If you create or edit a role on a vCenter Server system that is part of a connected group in Linked Mode, the changes you make are propagated to all other vCenter Server systems in the group. Assignments of roles to specific users and objects are not shared across linked vCenter Server systems. o Permissions grant users the VCP-410 questions right to perform the activities specified by the role on the object to which the role is assigned o By default, all users who are members of the Windows Administrators group on the vCenter Server system have the same access rights as any user assigned to the Administrator role on all objects. o Propagation is set per permission, not universally applied. Permissions defined for a child object always override those propagated from parent objects. o You cannot set permissions directly on a vNetwork Distributed Switches. To set permissions for a vNetwork Distributed Switch and its associated dvPort Groups, set permissions on a parent object, such a folder or datacenter, and select the option to propagate these permissions to child objects. o If no permission is defined for the user on that object, the user is assigned the union of privileges assigned to the groups for that object. o If a permission is defined for the user on that object, the user's permission takes precedence over all group permissions o Reports are updated every 30 minutes. o Map views are updated every 30 minutes o Alarms are notifications that occur in response to selected events, conditions, and states that occur with objects in the inventory. o Alarms are composed of a trigger and an action. o Alarms have two types of triggers: condition/state triggers, and event triggers. o Condition or State Triggers Monitor the current condition or state of VMs, hosts, and datastores. o Event Triggers Monitors events that occur in response to operations occuring with any managed object in the inventory, the vCenter Server system, or the license server. o Condition and state triggers use one of the following operator sets to monitor an object: o Is equal to and Is not equal to o Is above and Is below o Event triggers use arguments, operators, and values to monitor operations that occur in the vServer System. o Alarm actions are operations that occur in response to triggered alarms. o The default VMware alarms do not have actions associated with them. You must manually associate actions with the default alarms. o You can disable an alarm action from occurring without disabling the alarm itself. o You disable alarm actions for a selected inventory object. o When you disable the alarm actions for an object, they continue to occur on child objects. o When you disable alarm actions, all actions on all alarms for the object are disabled. You cannot disable a subset of alarm actions. o The SNMP agent included with vCenter Server can be used to send traps when alarms are triggered on a vCenter Server. o Alarm reporting can further restrict when a condition or state alarm trigger occurs by adding a tolerance range and a trigger frequency to the trigger configuration. o The tolerance range specifies VCP-410 dumps a percentage above or below the configured threshold point, after which the alarm triggers or clears. o Condition threshold + Tolerance Range = Trigger alarm o The trigger frequency is the time period during which a triggered alarm action is not reported again. By default, the trigger frequency for the default VMware alarms is set to 5 minutes. o Statistical data consists of CPU, memory, disk, network, system, and VM operations metrics. o Collection intervals determine the time period during which statistics are aggregated and rolled up, and the length of time the statistics are archived in the vCenter database. By default, vCenter Server has four collection intervals: Day, Week, Month, and Year. o Real-time statistics are not stored in the database. They are stored in a flat file on ESX/ESXi hosts and in memory on the vCenter Server systems o Real-time statistics are collected directly on an ESX/ESXi host every 20 seconds (60 seconds for ESX Server 2.x hosts). o On ESX hosts, the statistics are kept for one hour, after which 180 data points (15 -20 second samples) will have been collected. o On ESXi hosts, the statistics are kept for 30 minutes, after which 90 data points will have been collected. o Collection Intervals: Collected frequency Retention 5 Minutes 1 Day 30 Minutes 1 Week 2 Hours 1 Month 1 Day 1 Year o You can change the frequency at which statistic queries occur, the length of time statistical data is stored in the vCenter Server database, and the amount of statistical data collected. o Not all attributes are configurable for each collection interval. o You can assign a collection level of 1- 4 to each collection interval, with level 4 having the largest number of counters. o By default, all collection Passed VCP-410 intervals use collection level 1. o Generally, you need to use only collection levels 1 and 2 for performance monitoring and analysi

o vSphere supports a maximum of eight simultaneous VMotion, cloning, deployment, or Storage VMotion accesses to a single VMFS3 datastore, and a maximum of four simultaneous VMotion, cloning, deployment, or Storage VMotion accesses to a single NFS or VMFS2 datastore. A migration with VMotion involves one access to the datastore. A migration with Storage VMotion involves one access to the source datastore and one access to the destination datastore o Disks are converted from VCP-410 exam thin to thick format or thick to thin format only when they are copied from one datastore to another. If you choose to leave a disk in its original location, the disk format is not converted. o Thin or thick provisioned – not available for RDMs in physical compatibility mode. If you select this option for a virtual compatibility mode RDM, the RDM is converted to a virtual disk. RDMs converted to virtual disks cannot be converted back to RDMs. o You can run the storage vmotion command in either interactive or noninteractive mode. o Interactive mode, type svmotion --interactive. o Noninteractive mode: svmotion [Standard CLI options] --datacenter= --vm ‘:’ [--disks ‘:, :]’ o A snapshot captures the entire state of the VM at the time you take the snapshot. This includes: o Memory state – The contents of the VM’s memory. o Settings state – The VM settings. o Disk state – The state of all the VM’s virtual disks. o Snapshots of raw disks, RDM physical mode disks, and independent disks are not supported. o Change Disk Mode to independent to Exclude Virtual Disks from Snapshots o Persistent – Disks in persistent mode behave like conventional disks on your physical computer. All data written to a disk in persistent mode are written permanently to the disk. o Nonpersistent – Changes are discarded when you power off or reset the VM. Nonpersistent mode enables you to restart the VM with a virtual disk in the same state every time. Changes to the disk are actually written to and read from a redo log file that is deleted when you power off or reset. o Snapshots: o Delete – commits the snapshot data to the parent and removes the selected snapshot. o Delete All – commits all the immediate snapshots before the You are here current state to the base disk and removesall existing snapshots for that VM. o Revert to Snapshot – a shortcut to the parent snapshot of “You are here”. o If you use Active Directory groups for permissions, make sure that they are security groups and not distribution groups. o Users who are currently VCP-410 exam questions logged in and are removed from the domain retain their vSphere permissions only until the next validation period (the default is every 24 hours). o A role is a predefined set of privileges. Privileges define basic individual rights required to perform actions and read properties. When you assign a user or group permissions, you pair the user or group with a role and associate that pairing with an inventory object. o Default roles: o System roles – System roles are permanent. You cannot edit the privileges associated with these roles. o Sample roles – VMware provides sample roles for convenience as guidelines and suggestions. You can modify or remove these roles. o You can also create completely new roles. o All roles permit the user to schedule tasks by default. Users can schedule only tasks they have permission to perform at the time the tasks are created. o Default roles: Role Role Type Description of User Capabilities No Access system Cannot view or change the assigned object. available in ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server. Read Only system View the state and details about the object. available on ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server. Administrator system All privileges for all objects. available in ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server. Virtual Machine Power User sample allow the user to interact with and make hardware changes to VMs, as well as perform snapshot operations. available only on vCenter Server. Virtual Machine User sample allow the user to interact with a VM’s console, insert media, and perform power operations. available only on vCenter Server. Resource Pool Administrator sample allow the user to create child resource pools and modify the configuration of the children, but not to modify the resource configuration of the pool or cluster on which the role was granted. Also allows the user to grant permissions to child resource pools, and assign VMs to the parent or child resource pools. available only on vCenter Server. VMware Consolidated Backup User sample used by the VMware Consolidated Backup product and should not be modified. available only on vCenter Server. Datastore Consumer sample VCP-410 study guide allow the user to consume space on the datastores on which this role is granted. available only on vCenter Server. Network Consumer sample allow the user to assign VMs or hosts to networks available only on vCenter Server.

o NPIV support is subject to the following limitations: o NPIV must be enabled on the SAN switch. o NPIV is supported only for VMs with RDM disks. o The physical HBAs on VCP-410 dumps the ESX host must have access to a LUN using its WWNs in order for any VMs on that host to have access to that LUN using their NPIV WWNs. o The physical HBAs on the ESX host must support NPIV. o Each VMcan have up to 4 virtual ports. NPIV-enabled VMs are assigned exactly 4 NPIV-related WWNs. Can utilize up to 4 physical HBAs for NPIV purposes. o A VM with WWNs that are already in use on the storage network is prevented from powering on. o While hyperthreading does not double the performance of a system, it can increase performance by better utilizing idle resources. o The advanced CPU settings are useful only for fine-grained tweaking of critical VMs. o NUMA memory node affinity enables fine-grained control over how VM memory is distributed to host physical memory. o Specify nodes to be used for future memory allocations only if you have also specified CPU affinity. o The following NIC types are supported: vNIC Description Flexible Supported on VMs that were created on ESX Server 3.0 or greater and that run 32-bit guest operating systems. The Flexible adapter functions as a vlance adapter if VMware Tools is not installed in the VM and as a vmxnet driver if VMware Tools is installed in the VM. e1000 Emulates the functioning of an E1000 network card. It is the default adapter type for VMs that run 64-bit guest operating systems. Enhanced vmxnet An upgraded version of the vmxnet device with enhanced performance. It requires that VMware Tools be installed in the VM. vmxnet 3 Next generation vmxnet device with enhanced performance and enhanced networking features. It requires that VMware Tools be installed in the VM, and is available only on VMs with hardware version 7 and greater. o Independent disks are not affected by snapshots. o Two modes for independent disks: o Persistent – The disk operates normally except that changes to the disk are permanent even if the VM is reverted to a snapshot. o Nonpersistent – The disk appears to operate normally, but whenever the VM is powered off or reverted to a snapshot, the contents of the disk return to their original state. All later changes are discarded. o VMDirectPath I/O allows a guest operating system on a VM to directly access physical PCI and PCIe devices connected to a host. Each VM can be connected to up to two PCI devices. PCI devices connected to a host can be marked as available for passthrough from the Hardware Advanced Settings in the Configuration tab for the host. o Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) VCP-410 adapters are high-performance storage adapters that can provide greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. PVSCSI adapters are best suited for environments, especially SAN environments, running I/O-intensive applications. PVSCSI adapters are not suited for DAS environments. o Hardware requirements for customizing the guest operating system: o Must reside on a disk attached as SCSI 0:0 node in the VM configuration. o If a VM has mixed IDE and SCSI disks, the first IDE disk is considered the boot disk, and vCenter Server passes it to the customizer. o If the new VM encounters customization errors while it is booting o Customization errors are logged to (Windows guest) %WINDIR%tempvmware-imc or (Linux guest) /var/log/vmware/customization.log. o When you migrate a suspended VM, the new host for the VM must meet CPU compatibility requirements, because the VM must resume executing instructions on the new host. o Use of Jumbo Frames is recommended for best VMotion performance. o Some restrictions apply when migrating VMs with snapshots. You cannot migrate a virtual machine with snapshots with Storage VMotion. o You can migrate as long as the VM is being migrated to a new host without moving its configuration file or disks (the VM must reside on shared storage accessible to both hosts). o Reverting to a snapshot after migration with VMotion might cause the VM to fail, because the migration wizard cannot verify the compatibility of the VM state in the snapshot with the destination host. o During a migration with Storage VMotion, you can transform virtual disks from thick-provisioned to thin or from thin-provisioned to thick. o Storage VMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations: o Virtual machines with snapshots cannot be migrated using Storage VMotion. o Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). For virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file or convert to thick-provisioned or thinprovisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. For physical compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only. o Must have a license that includes Storage VMotion. o ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts must be VCP-410 braindump licensed and configured for VMotion. ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later hosts do not require VMotion configuration in order to perform migration with Storage VMotion. o A particular host can be involved in up to two migrations with VMotion or Storage VMotion at one time.

o The vSphere Client validates an OVF file before importing it. o A vApp is a container, like a resource pool and can contain one or more VMs. A vApp can power on and power off, and can also be cloned. o The vApp metadata resides in the vCenter Server's database o You can add an object, such as a VM or another vApp, to an existing vApp. o An IP pool is a network VCP-410 exam questions configuration that is assigned to a network used by a vApp. The vApp can then leverage vCenter Server to automatically provide an IP configuration to its VMs. o Each application within the service will be powered on according to how the startup order is set. When powering on a vApp within a DRS cluster in manual mode, no DRS recommendations are generated for VM placements. The power on operation performs as if DRS is run in a semi-automatic or automatic mode for the initial placements of the VMs. This does not affect VMotion recommendations. Recommendations for individual powering on and powering off of VMs are also generated for vApps that are running o A VM’s name can be up to 80 characters long. Names are case insensitive. o Virtual machine version 4 — Compatible with ESX 3.0 and greater hosts and VMware Server 1.0 and greater hosts. o Virtual machine version 7 — Compatible with ESX 4.0 and greater hosts. Provides greater VM functionality. o Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are high-performance storage adapters that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU utilization. o Best suited for high performance storage environments. o Not suited for DAS environments. VMware recommends that you create a primary adapter (LSI Logic by default) for use with a disk that will host the system software (boot disk) and a separate PVSCSI adapter for the disk that will store user data, such as a database. o Paravirtual SCSI adapters are available for VMs running hardware version 7 and greater. They are supported on the following guest operating systems: o Windows Server 2008 o Windows Server 2003 o Red Hat Linux (RHEL) 5 o Features not supported with Paravirtual SCSI adapters: o Boot disks o Record/Replay o Fault Tolerance o MSCS Clustering o SCSI controller types: o BusLogic Parallel o LSI Logic SAS o LSI Logic Parallel o VMware Paravirtual o Thin Provisioned Format – Use VCP-410 study guide this format to save storage space. If a virtual disk supports clustering solutions such as Fault Tolerance, you cannot make the disk thin. You can manually convert the thin disk into thick. o Thick Format – This is the default virtual disk format. It is not possible to convert the thick disk into thin. (EDIT: you can via Storage VMotion) o Automatic VMware Tools upgrade is not supported for VMs with Solaris or Netware guest operating systems. o If you are using a WYSE thin client device to conduct remote desktop sessions using VMware VDI, installing WYSE Multimedia Support in the guest operating system improves the performance of streaming video. WYSE Multimedia Support is supported on the Windows 2003 and Windows XP guest operating systems only. WYSE Multimedia Support is installed as part of a VMware Tools installation or upgrade. o Virtual machines with hardware versions lower than 4 can run on ESX4 hosts but have reduced performance and capabilities. In particular, you cannot add or remove virtual devices on VMs with hardware versions lower than 4 when they reside on an ESX4 host. o Virtual Machine Hardware Versions: Host Version 7 Version 4 Version 3 Compatible with vCenter Server version ESX/ESXi 4.x create, edit, run create, edit, run run vCenter Server 4.x ESX Server 3.x – create, edit, run run VirtualCenter Server 2.x and higher ESX Server 2.x – – create, edit, run VirtualCenter Server 1.x and higher o SCSI Bus Sharing list: Option Description None Virtual disks cannot be shared by other VMs. Virtual Virtual disks can be shared by VMs on same server. Physical Virtual disks can be shared by VMs on any server. o Memory/CPU Hotplug – VMware Tools must be installed for hotplug functionality to work properly. o VMI – A paravirtualization standard that enables improved performance for VMs capable of utilizing it. o Enabling paravirtualization utilizes one of the VM’s six virtual PCI slots o A VM with paravirtualization enabled and that is powered off can be moved manually to a host that does not support paravirtualization. However, this can result in VCP-410 questions reduced performance. o N-port ID virtualization (NPIV) – Provides the ability to share a single physical Fibre Channel HBA port among multiple virtual ports, each with unique identifiers. This allows control over VMaccess to LUNs on a per-VMbasis.

o ESX/ESXi System Logs Component Location ESX Server 2.x Service log /var/log/vmware/vmware-serverd.log ESX Server 3.x or ESX VCP-410 Service log /var/log/vmware/hostd.log vSphere Client Agent log /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log Virtual Machine Kernel Core file /root/vmkernel-core. and /root/vmkernel-log. present after rebooting Syslog log /var/log/messages Service Console Availability report /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Messages /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Alerts & Availability report /var/log/vmkernel VMkernel Warning /var/log/vmkwarning Virtual Machine log file The same directory as the .vmx file for the VM. o vSphere Client System Logs Component Location vSphere Client Installation log Temp directory on the vSphere Client machine. e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsTempvmmsi.log vSphere Client Service log vpx directory in the Application Data directory on the vSphere Client machine. e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication Data vpxviclientx. log x(=0, 1, ... 9) o VMware Server System Logs Component Operating System Location VM Console log Windows Temp directory e.g.: C:Documents and SettingsLocal Settings Tempvmware--.log Linux Temp directory e.g.: /tmp/vmware-/ui-.log VM log Windows & Linux vmware.log Located in the same directory as the VM .vmx file. VM Event log Windows C:Program FilesVMwareVMware Virtual Infrastructure vmserverdRooteventlogvent- .vmx.log Linux /var/log/vmware/event-.vmx.log VM Conf file Windows .vmx Located in the folder where VMs are stored. Linux .vmx Located in the folder where VMs are stored. o All ESX/ESXi hosts run a syslog service (syslogd). o ESXi hosts can use the vSphere Client or the vSphere CLI command vicfg-syslog o Cannot use the vSphere Client or vicfg-syslog to configure syslog behavior for an ESX host. To configure syslog for an ESX host, you must edit the /etc/syslog.conf file. o Libraries – Central repositories for VM provisioning media e.g. VM templates, ISO images, floppy images, VMDK files, guest customization files. o Guided Consolidation VCP-410 braindump ports Port Protocol Service Description MS Windows 135 TCP/UDP Loc-srv/epmap Microsoft DCE Locator service (End-point Mapper). DHCP, DNS & WINS Server 137 TCP/UDP Netbios-ns NetBIOS names service. WINS & DNS Server 138 TCP/UDP Netbios-dgm NetBIOS datagram 139 TCP/UDP Netbios-ssn NetBIOS Session Windows File and Printer sharing. 445 TCP/UDP DNS DNS Direct Hosting port. Active Directory o Guided Consolidation can be installed together with vCenter Server, or can be installed on a separate host. For best performance, install Guided Consolidation on a separate host. It includes the following services: o vCenter Collector Service – Discovers domains and systems within domains. Collects performance data on those systems. o vCenter Provider Service – Helper service to the Collector Service. Communicates with target systems and passes the data back. o vCenter Guided Consolidation – Coordinates all communication among Guided Consolidation components. o You can analyze up to 100 systems simultaneously. o The following formula is used to resize converted disks: o amount of space used on physical disk * 1.25 = resultant virtual disk size o Virtual disks are set to a size of 4GB or larger. o Disconnecting a managed host does not remove it from vCenter Server; it temporarily suspends all monitoring activities performed by vCenter Server. o Deploying an OVF template is similar to deploying a VM from a template. However, you can deploy an OVF template from any local file system accessible from the vSphere VCP-410 exam Client machine, or from a remote web server. o OVF advantages: o OVF files are compressed, allowing for faster downloads.