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Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID - Chooses an uplink based on the virtual port where
the traffic entered the virtual switch. The traffic will be always send with that same uplink until that particular
uplink is failed and failed over to another NIC.
Route based on source MAC hash - Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet MAC
address.The traffic will be always send with that same uplink until that particular uplink is failed and failed over
to another NIC.
Route based on IP hash - Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source and destination IP addresses of each
packet.
What are the types for Network Failover Detection settings?
Link Status only
Beacon Probing
Link Status only - Relies solely on the link status provided by the network adapter. This detects failures, such as
cable pulls and physical switch power failures, but it cannot detect configuration errors, such as a physical
switch port being blocked by spanning tree or misconfigured to the wrong VLAN or cable pulls on the other
side of a physical switch.
Beacon Probing - Sends out and listens for beacon probes Ethernet broadcast frames sent by physical
adapters to detect upstream network connection failures on all physical Ethernet adapters in the team. In
addition to link status, to determine link failure. This detects many of the failures which are not detected by
Link Status.
ESX 3.5
Linked Mode
Host Profiles
No Host Profiles
Centralized License
Performance chart
Events and Alarms
Fault tolerance
Storage VMotion
VMotion
Virtual CPUs per host
Virtual Machines per host
Logical processors per host
RAM per host
Maximum Service console
Memory
DRS
VMware Data Recovery
Enhanced VMotion
Compatibility (EVC)
ESX 4
Linked Mode Supportis introduced in
vSphere 4.0
Host Profiles is Introduced in vSphere
4.0
License can be managed within vCenter
server
Lot More enhancements
Lot More enhancements
Available from vSphere 4.0
SVMotion available in GUI
Yes
512
320
64
1 TB
800 MB
Yes
Backup using VCB (VMware
Consolidated backup)
800 MB
Yes
VMware Data Recovery and VCB
support
No EVC
VMware HA Admission
Control
High Availability Clustering
with Windows Server 2000,
2003, 2008
Not Available
Not Available
32
32
32
NO
Yes
4
4
64 GB
65532MB
8
7
255 GB
255GB
NO
Yes
Vmkernel
Service Console
Concurrent remote console
sessions
32 Bit
32 Bit
64 bit
64 bit
10
No Thin Provisioning
40
Thin Provisioning introduced in vSphere
4.0
Not available
Only Via VCLI using vmkfstools
No
Not Available
Yes
Yes
Not Available
Not Available
Not Available
1016
No Only 4 way
Yes
DPM
Experimental
4088
Yes
Yes
Fully supported with PMI and iLO
Remote Power On
License Types
VMware Infrastructure
Foundation VMware
Infrastructure Standard VMware
Infrastructure Enterprise
Not Available
Yes
4
127
HA Agent
HA Host Approach
vSphere 4.1
ESX & ESXi
Yes VMA 4.1
AAM
Automatic Availability
Manager
Primary & Secondary
HA Failure Detection
HA Log File
DNS Dependent on DNS
Management N/W
/etc/opt/vmware/AAM
Yes
Hypervisor
VMA
vSphere 5.0
Only ESXi
Yes VMA 5
NO
Not Available
Available
FDM
Fault Domain Manager
Master & Slave
Management N/W and Storage
communication
/etc/opt/vmware/FDM
NO
boot systems from hard drives, CD/DVD
drives, or USB media
Yes
Available
Not Available
Not Available
VMFS-3
Not Available
Available
Available
VMFS-5
Available
Configure dependent
hardware iSCSI and software
iSCSI adapters along with the
network configurations and
port binding in a single dialog
box using the vSphere Client.
Fiber Channel & NFS
VM with Snapshot can be migrated
using Storage vMotion
Yes
Yes with enhancement
Yes
vCenter Virtual Appliance
Yes
yes with lot of improvements
8
32 vCpu
1 TB of vRAM
1 TB
Not Available
Yes
Metro Vmotion
Storage Vmotion
Licensing
Not Available
Not Available
4.1
Not Available
Not Available
Yes
Yes
5
Yes configure at VM setting
Apple Mac OS X Server 10.6
Not Available
Not Available
Not Available
320
160
1 TB
800 MB
256
Yes
Yes
Yes
512
160
2 TB
Not Applicable (NO SC)
256
Round-trip latencies of up to
5 milliseconds.
Round-trip latencies of up to
10 milliseconds. This provides better
performance over
long latency networks
Yes
NO
1000
10000
64-bit
64-bit
10000
64-bit
Not Applicable (NO SC)
vSphere Essentials
vSphere Essentials Plus
vSphere Standard
vSphere Advanced
vSphere Enterprise
vSphere Enterprise Plus
vSphere Essentials
vSphere Essentials Plus
vSphere Standard
vSphere Enterprise
vSphere Enterprise Plus
Capability
Service Console
Troubleshooting performed
via
ESX
Present
Service Console
ESXi
Removed
ESXi Shell
Active Director
Authentication
Enabled
Enabled
Secure Syslog
Not Supported
Supported
Management Network
VMKernel Interface
Jumbo Frames
Supported
Supported
Hardware Montioring
Supported in ESX
Supported in ESXi
Only experimental
Not present
Scripted Installtion
Supported
Supported
vMA Support
Yes
Yes
Major Administration
command-line Command
esxcfg-
esxcli
Not supported
Supported
Not supported
Supported
vMotion,Fault
Tolarance,Stoarge
Connectivity
Capability
Maximum single Extend size
Partition Style
Available Block Size
Maximum size of RDM in
Virtual Compatibiltiy
Maximum size of RDM in
Phsical Compatibiltiy
Supported Hosts versions
VMFS 3
2 TB less 512 bytes
MBR (Master Boot Record) style
1 MB/2MB/4MB/8MB
VMFS 5
64 TB
GPT (GUID Partition Table)
only 1 MB
Upgrade path
File Limit
Sub-Block size
VMFS 3 to VMFS 5
30,000
64 KB
64 TB
Only ESXi 5 is supported
64 TB (32 extends with
any size combination)
Latest Version. NO upgarde
available yet.
100,000
8 KB
Capabilities
Max datastore size
Maximum size of RDM in
Physical Compatibility
Block Size
Sub-block size
File limit
Partition Style
Partition Sector
Maximum size of RDM in
Virtual Compatibility
Max size of file
Upgraded VMFS 5
64 TB
64 TB
Continuous to use the previous block
size
which may be 1MB/2MB/4MB/8 MB
64 KB sub-blocks
30,000
MBR (Master Boot Record) style
partition starting on sector 128
64 TB
Template
Template acts as a baseline image with the
predefined configuration as per organization
standards
Create a template to create a master image of a
virtual machine from which you can deploy multiple
virtual machines
simultaneously.
Power off All the VMs are powered off , when the HA detects that the network isolation occurs
Shut down All VMs running on that host are shut down with the help of VMware Tools, when the HA detects
that the network isolation occurs.If the shutdown via VMWare tools not happened within 5 minutes, VM's
power off operation will be executed. This behavior can be changed with the help of HA advanced options.
Leave powered on The VM's state remain powered on or remain unchanged, when the HA detects that the
network isolation occurs.
How to add additional isolation address for redundancy?
By default, VMWare HA use to ping default gateway as the isolation address if it stops receiving heartbeat.We
can add an additional values in case if we are using redundant service console both belongs to different
subnet.Let's say we can add the default gateway of SC1 as first value and gateway of SC2 as the additional one
using the below value
1. Right Click your HA cluster
2. Goto to advanced options of HA
3. Add the line "das.isolationaddress1 = 192.168.0.1"
4. Add the line "das.isolationaddress2 = 192.168.1.1" as the additional isolation address
What is HA Admission control?
VCenter Server uses admission control to ensure that sufficient resources are available in a cluster to provide
failover protection and to ensure that virtual machine resource reservations are respected.
What are the 2 types of settings available for admission control?
Select the maximum number of host failures that you can afford for or to guarantee fail over. Prior vSphere 4.1,
Minimum is 1 and the maximum is 4.
In the Host Failures cluster tolerates admission control policy , we can define the specific number of hosts that
can fail in the cluster and also it ensures that the sufficient resources remain to fail over all the virtual machines
from that failed hosts to the other hosts in cluster. VMware High Availability(HA) uses a mechanism called
slots to calculate both the available and required resources in the cluster for a failing over virtual machines from
a failed host to other hosts in the cluster.
What is SLOT?
"A slot is a logical representation of the memory and CPU resources that satisfy the requirements for any
powered-on virtual machine in the cluster."
If you have configured reservations at VM level, It influence the HA slot calculation. Highest memory
reservation and highest CPU reservation of the VM in your cluster determines the slot size for the cluster.
How to Check the HA Slot information from vSphere Client?
Click on Cluster Summary Tab and Click on "Advanced Runtime Info" to see the the detailed HA
slots information.
Let's take an example, you are performing network maintenance activity on your switches which connects your
one of th ESX host in HA cluster.
what will happen if the switch connected to the ESX host in HA cluster is down?
It will not receive heartbeat and also ping to the isolation address also failed. so, host will think itself as isolated
and HA will initiate the reboot of virtual machines on the host to other hosts in the cluster. Why do you need
this unwanted situation while performing scheduled maintenance window.
To avoid the above situation when performing scheduled activity which may cause ESX host to isolate, remove
the check box in " Enable Host Monitoring" until you are done with the network maintenance activity.
How to Manually define the HA Slot size?
By default, HA slot size is determined by the Virtual machine Highest CPU and memory reservation. If no
reservation is specified at the VM level, default slot size of 256 MHZ for CPU and 0 MB + memory overhead
for RAM will be taken as slot size. We can control the HA slot size manually by using the following values.
There are 4 options we can configure at HA advanced options related to slot size
das.slotMemInMB - Maximum Bound value for HA memory slot size
das.slotCpuInMHz - Maximum Bound value for HA CPU slot Size
das.vmMemoryMinMB - Minimum Bound value for HA memory slot size
das.vmCpuMinMHz - Minimum Bound value for HA CPU slot size
How the "Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity" admission control policy
works?
In the Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity admission control policy, We can
define the specific percentage of total cluster resources are reserved for failover.In contrast to the "Host Failures
cluster tolerates admission control policy", It will not use slots. Instead This policy calculates the in the way
below
1.It calculates the Total resource requirement for all Powered-on Virtual Machines in the cluster and also
calculates the total resource available in host for virtual machines.
2.It calculates the current CPU and Memory Failover capacity for the capacity.
3.If the current CPU and Memory Failover capacity for the cluster < configured failover capacity (ex 25 %)
4.Admission control will not allow to power on the virtual machine which violates the availability constraints.
How the "Specify a failover host" admission control policy works?
In the Specify a failover host" admission control policy, We can define a specific host as a dedicated failover
host. Whenisolation response is detected, HA attempts to restart the virtual machines on the specified failover
host.In this Approach, dedicated failover hist will be sitting idle without actively involving or not participating
in DRS load balancing.DRS will not migrate or power on placement of virtual machines on the defined failover
host.
What is VM Monitoring status?
HA will usually monitors ESX hosts and reboot the virtual machine in the failed hosts in the other host in the
cluster in case of host isolation but i need the HA to monitors for Virtual machine failures also. here the feature
called VM monitoring status as part of HA settings.VM monitoring restarts the virtual machine if
the vmware tools heartbeat didn't received with the specified time using Monitoring sensitivity.
Another way is to check the summary tab of the ESX/ESXi host, "Host Configured for FT" yes or NO.
If " Host Configured for FT" is No. It will display the items required for that particular ESX for FT to work.
How does the FT enabled virtual machine will be differentiated with non FT VM's in vSphere client?
FT Enabled Virtual machine will appear in Dark Blue colour as compared to non-protected virtual machines.
By default, Only Primary virtual machine will appear under the cluster and ESX host. To take a look at the
secondary VM , Go to Virtual Machines tab of the Cluster or Host.
What happens when you enabled Fault Tolerance for your virtual machine?
When you enable Fault Tolerance for the virtual machine, a secondary virtual machine (live shadow image of
the primary) will be created to work with the primary virtual machine in which you have enabled FT. The
primary and secondary virtual machine resides on a different ESX hosts in the cluster.
What will happen when the ESX host of primary VM failed?
When a failure is detected on the primary VM's ESX host, the secondary virtual machine which is running on
the another ESX server in the same cluster will takes the place of the first one with the least possible
interruption of service.
If vCenter is down, will the FT work?
vCenter server is only required to enable FT on the virtual machine.once it is configured, vCenter is not
required to be in online for FT to work. FT failover between primary and secondary will occure even if the
vCenter is down.
How does Vmware FT differs from VMware HA?
1.VMware HA is enabled per cluster basis but FT is enabled per VM basis.
2. In case of ESX host failure, virtual machines in the failed host are restarted and powered-on on the other
active hosts in HA cluster. So the restart duration of the virtual machine is the downtime for the virtual machine
in HA cluster. But in FT enabled virtual machine, there is no downtime. In case of host failure, secondary VM
will become primary and continuing the execution from the exact point where the primary VM is left off or
failed. It happens automatically without data loss, without downtime and with a little delay. Users will not see
any interruption.
How do you see the summary status of the FT enabled virtual machines in the ESX host from vsphere
client?
Click on Summary tab of the ESX host -> Fault tolerance information and VM counts will be displayed
1. VMWare Kernel is a Proprietary Kenral and is not based on any of the UNIX operating systems, it's a kernel
developed by VMWare Company.
2. The VMKernel can't boot it by itself, so that it takes the help of the 3rd party operating system. In VMWare
case the kernel is booted by RedHat Linux operating system which is known as service console.
3. The service console is developed based up on Redhat Linux Operating system, it is used to manage the
VMKernel
4. To restart webaccess service on vmware
service vmware-webaccess restart this will restart apache tomcat app
words all the packets are sent to all the ports on vSwitch
If the promiscuous mode set to Reject, the packets are sent to inteded port, so that the intended virtual
machine was able to see the communication.
18. What is MAC address Changes ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can
see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not
allow incoming traffic to the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same, and
the incoming traffic will be allowed to the VM.
19. What is Forged Transmits ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can
see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not
allow outgoing traffic from the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same,
and the outgoing traffic will be allowed from the VM.
20. What are the core services of VC ?
VM provisioning , Task Scheduling and Event Logging
21. Can we do vMotion between two datacenters ? If possible how it will be?
Yes we can do vMotion between two datacenters, but the mandatory requirement is the VM should be powered
off.
22. What is VC agent? and what service it is corresponded to? What are the minimum req's for VC agent
installation ?
VC agent is an agent installed on ESX server which enables communication between VC and ESX server.
The daemon associated with it is called vmware-hostd , and the service which corresponds to it is called as
mgmt-vmware, in the event of VC agent failure just restart the service by typing the following command at the
service console
" service mgmt-vmware restart "
VC agent installed on the ESX server when we add it to the VC, so at the time of installtion if you are getting an
error like " VC Agent service failed to install ", check the /Opt size whether it is sufficient or not.
23. How can you edit VI Client Settings and VC Server Settings ?
Click Edit Menu on VC and Select Client Settings to change VI settings
Click Administration Menu on VC and Select VC Management Server Configuration to Change VC Settings
24. What are the files that make a Virtual Machine ?
.vmx - Virtual Machine Configuration File
.nvram - Virtual Machine BIOS
.vmdk - Virtual Machine Disk file
.vswp - Virtual Machine Swap File
.vmsd - Virtual MAchine Snapshot Database
.vmsn - Virtual Machine Snapshot file
.vmss - Virtual Machine Suspended State file
.vmware.log - Current Log File
.vmware-#.log - Old Log file
25. What are the devices that can be added while the virtual Machine running
In VI 3.5 we can add Hard Disk and NIC's while the machine running.
In vSphere 4.0 we can add Memory and Processor along with HDD and NIC's while the machine running
26. How to set the time delay for BIOS screen for a Virtual Machine?
Right Click on VM, select edit settings, choose options tab and select boot option, set the delay how much you
want.
27. What is a template ?
We can convert a VM into Template, and it cannot be powered on once its changed to template. This is used to
quick provisioning of VM's.
23. What to do to customize the windows virtual machine clone,?
copy the sysprep files to Virtual center directory on the server, so that the wizard will take the advantage of it.
24. What to do to customize the linux/unix virtual machine clone,?
VC itself includes the customization tools, as these operating systems are available as open source.
25. Does cloning from template happens between two datacenters ?
Yes.. it can, if the template in one datacenter, we can deploy the vm from that template in another datacenter
without any problem.
26. What are the common issues with snapshots? What stops from taking a snapshot and how to fix it ?
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's, then the snapshot failed. If it is mapped as virtual then we can
take a snapshot of it.
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's as physical, you need to remove it to take a snapshot.
27. What are the settings that are taken into to consideration when we initiate a snapshot ?
Virtual Machine Configuration (What hardware is attached to it)
State of the Virtual Machine Hard Disk file ( To revert back if needed)
State of the Virtual Machine Memory (if it is powered on)
28. What are the requirements for Converting a Physical machine to VM ?
An agent needs to be installed on the Physical machine
VI client needs to be installed with Converter Plug-in
A server to import/export virtual machines
29. What is VMWare consolidated backup ?
It is a backup framework, that supports 3rd party utilities to take backups of ESX servers and Virtual Machines.
Its not a backup service.
30. To open the guided consolidation tool, what are the user requirements ?
The user must be member of administrator, The user should have "Logon as service" privileges - To give a user
these privileges ,open local sec policy, select Logon as service policy and add the user the user should have read
access to AD to send queries
6.What is the use of VMware vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client ?
vCenter Server provides a centralized management framework to VMware ESXi hosts.To access vCenter server,
you need vSphere client or vSphere Web client service enabled.
7.What is the difference between vSphere Client and vSphere web client ?
vSphere Client is traditional utility which provides user interface to vCenter server. But from VMware vSphere
5 onwards,vSphere web client is a primary interface to manage vCenter server.For vSphere client, you need
install small utility .But vSphere Web client doent require any software. You can directly connect using
web browser.But still VUM is managed through vSphere Client .
8.What is the use of VMware vCenter Orchestrator ?
Capability
Service Console
ESX
Present
ESXi
Removed
Service Console
ESXi Shell
Enabled
Enabled
Secure Syslog
Not Supported
Supported
Management Network
VMKernel Interface
Jumbo Frames
Supported
Supported
Hardware Montioring
Supported in ESX
Supported in ESXi
Only experimental
Not present
Scripted Installtion
Supported
Supported
vMA Support
Yes
Yes
esxcfg-
esxcli
Not supported
Supported
Not supported
Supported
vMotion,Fault Tolarance,Stoarge
Connectivity
1.What is vMotion?
Live migration of a virtual machine from one ESX server to another with Zero downtime . VMs disk files stay
where they are (on shared storage)
2. What are the use cases of vMotion ?
Balance the load on ESX servers (DRS
Save power by shutting down ESX using DPM
Perform patching and maintenance on ESX server (Update Manager or HW maintenance
3. What are Pre-requisites for the vMotion to Work?
ESX host must be licensed for VMotion
ESX servers must be configured with vMotion Enabled VMkernel Ports.
ESX servers must have compatible CPUs for the vMotion to work
ESX servers should have Shared storage (FB, iSCSI or NFS) and VMs should be stored on that
storage.
ESX servers should have exact similar network & network names
4. What are the Limitations of vMotion?
Virtual machines configured with the Raw Device Mapping(RDM) for clustering features using vMotion
VM cannot be connected to a CD-ROM or floppy drive that is using an ISO or floppy image stored on a drive
that is local to the host server. The device should be disconnected before initiating the vMotion.
Virtual Machine cannot be migrated with VMotion unless the destination swapfile location is the same as the
source swapfile location. As a best practice, Place the virtual machine swap files with the virtual machine
configuration file.
irtual Machine affinity must not be set (aka, bound to physical CPUs).
5. Steps involved in VMWare vMotion ?
A request has been made that VM-1 should be migrated (or VMotioned) from ESX A to ESX B.
VM-1s memory is pre-copied from ESX A to ESX B while ongoing changes are written to a memory bitmap on
ESX A.
VM-1 is quiesced on ESX A and VM-1s memory bitmap is copied to ESX B.
VM-1 is started on ESX B and all access to VM-1 is now directed to the copy running on ESX B.
The rest of VM-1s memory is copied from ESX A all the while memory is being read and written from VM-1
on ESX A when applications attempt to access that memory on VM-1 on ESX B.
If the migration is successful, VM-1 is unregistered on ESX A.
1.What is SvMotion?
Migration of a virtual machine files and disks from one datastore to another with Zero downtime.
Pre-copies Virtual machine disk and swap file will start from the source to destination datastore as the first
iteration. once it is completed, It only transfers the region which were modified or written after the first
iteration.
ESX performs fast suspend and resume of the virtual Machine. The final changed regions will be copied to the
destination before the virtual Machine is resumed on the destination datastore.
Virtual Machine will continue running on the destination datastore and source file and disk will be deleted.
Feature
ESXi 5.1 and later ESXi 5.0 and later ESX/ESXi 4.x and
later
Hardware version
1035264
1035264
261120
65532
Maximum number of
logical processors
64
32
Maximum number of
cores (virtual CPUs) per
socket
64
32
Maximum SCSI
adapters
Maximum NICs
10
10
10
USB 3.0
machines on Linux
guests.)
machines on Linux
guests.)
524288
131072
131072
131072
SVGA 3D hardware
acceleration
Serial ports
Parallel ports
Floppy devices
Guest OS support
91
91
78
45