What is Multipathing (NMP).

Ans - By default, ESXi provides an extensible multipathing module called the Native Multipathing Plug-
In (NMP). Generally, the VMware NMP supports all storage arrays listed on the VMware storage HCL
and provides a default path selection algorithm based on the array type.

To maintain a constant connection between a host and its storage, ESXi supports multipathing.
Multipathing is a technique that lets you use more than one physical path that transfers data between the
host and an external storage device.

In case of a failure of any element in the SAN network, such as an adapter, switch, or cable, ESXi can
switch to another physical path, which does not use the failed component. This process of path switching
to avoid failed components is known as path failover.

In addition to path failover, multipathing provides load balancing. Load balancing is the process of
distributing I/O loads across multiple physical paths. Load balancing reduces or removes potential
bottlenecks.

Location of hostd & vpx logs ?

VPXD-It is Vcenter Server Service. If this service is stopped then we will not able to connect to Vcenter
Server via Vsphere client. VPXA-It is the agent of Vcenter server. also known as mini vcenter server which
is installed on the each esx server which is managed by Vcenter server.

VPXD-It is Vcenter Server Service. If this service is stopped then we will not able to connect to Vcenter
Server via Vsphere client.

VPXA-It is the agent of Vcenter server. also known as mini vcenter server which is installed on the each
esx server which is managed by Vcenter server. What are the management action we are performing on
top of the vcenter server. (Like:- Increasing/Decreasing RAM & HDD, Making any type of changes in
cluster, doing vmotion. This agent collects all information from the vcenter server and pass this
information to the kernal of the esx server.
HOSTD- This is the agent of ESX server, here VPXA pass the information to the HOSTD and hostd pass the
information to ESX server.

ESXi 5.0 Host Log Files

Logs for an ESXi 5.0 host are grouped according to the source component:

 /var/log/auth.log: ESXi Shell authentication success and failure.

 /var/log/dhclient.log: DHCP client service, including discovery, address lease requests and
renewals.

 /var/log/esxupdate.log: ESXi patch and update installation logs.

 /var/log/hostd.log: Host management service logs, including virtual machine and host Task and
Events, communication with the vSphere Client and vCenter Server vpxa agent, and SDK
connections.

 /var/log/shell.log: ESXi Shell usage logs, including enable/disable and every command entered.
For more information, see theManaging vSphere with Command-Line Interfaces section of
the vSphere 5 Command Line documentation and Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands in
ESXi 5.x (2004810).
 /var/log/sysboot.log: Early VMkernel startup and module loading.

 /var/log/boot.gz : A compressed file that contains boot log information and can be read using zcat
/var/log/boot.gz|more .

 /var/log/syslog.log: Management service initialization, watchdogs, scheduled tasks and DCUI use.
  /var/log/usb.log: USB device arbitration events, such as discovery and pass-through to virtual
machines.

 /var/log/vobd.log: VMkernel Observation events, similar to vob.component.event.

Note: For clarification VOB and the corresponding service VOBD propagates kernel level errors to third-
party applications. VOBD is a daemon that VMware and third-party applications use for monitoring and
troubleshooting.

 /var/log/vmkernel.log: Core VMkernel logs, including device discovery, storage and networking
device and driver events, and virtual machine startup.

 /var/log/vmkwarning.log: A summary of Warning and Alert log messages excerpted from the
VMkernel logs.

 /var/log/vmksummary.log: A summary of ESXi host startup and shutdown, and an hourly

heartbeat with uptime, number of virtual machines running, and service resource consumption.
For more information, see Format of the ESXi 5.0 vmksummary log file (2004566).

Note: For information on sending logs to another location such as a datastore or remote syslog
server, see Configuring syslog on ESXi 5.0 (2003322).

Logs from vCenter Server Components on ESXi 5.0

When an ESXi 5.0 host is managed by vCenter Server 5.0, two components are installed, each with its
own logs:

 /var/log/vpxa.log: vCenter Server vpxa agent logs, including communication with vCenter Server
and the Host Management hostdagent.

 /var/log/fdm.log: vSphere High Availability logs, produced by the fdm service. For more
information, see the vSphere HA Securitysection of the vSphere 5.0 Availability Guide.

Note: If persistent scratch space is configured, many of these logs are located on the scratch volume and
the /var/log/ directory contains symlinks to the persistent storage location. Rotated logs are compressed
at the persistent location and/or at /var/run/log/. For more information, see Creating a persistent scratch
location for ESXi (1033696).

What is the snapshot size for Vm ?

Snapshot disk space used and rate of growth

If you create more than one snapshot of your virtual machine (VM), then you'll have multiple restore
points available to revert to. When you create a snapshot, what was currently writable becomes read-only
from that point on. Using in-file delta technology, new files are created that contain all changes (delta) to
the original virtual machine disk files (VMDK).

The size of a snapshot file can never exceed the size of the original disk file. Any time a disk block is
changed, the snapshot is created in the delta file and updated as changes are made. If you changed every
single disk block on your server after taking a snapshot, your snapshot would still be the same size as
your original disk file. But there's some additional overhead disk space that contains information used to
manage the snapshots. The maximum overhead disk space varies; it's based on the Virtual Machine Files
System (VMFS) block size:

Block size Maximum VMDK size Maximum overhead

1 MB 256 GB 2 GB
2 MB 512 GB 4 GB
4 MB 1024 GB 8 GB
8 MB 2048 GB 16 GB

The required overhead disk space can cause snapshot creation to fail if a VM's virtual disk is close the
maximum VMDK size for a VMFS volume. If a VM's virtual disk is 512 GB on a VMFS volume with a 2 MB
block size, for example, the maximum snapshot size would be 516 GB (512 GB + 4 GB), which would
exceed the 512 GB maximum VMDK size for the VMFS volume and cause the snapshot creation to fail.

So if you plan on using snapshots, you should create VMs with a virtual disk size that's smaller than the
maximum VMDK size by the amount of the maximum overhead (e.g., 512 GB - 4GB = 508 GB). Snapshot
files will initially be small (16 MB), but will grow as writes are made to the VM's disk files.

Snapshots grow in 16 MB increments to help reduce SCSI reservation conflicts. When requests are made
to change a block on the original disk, it is instead changed in the delta file. If the previously changed disk
block in a delta file is changed again, it will not increase the size of the delta file because it simply updates
the existing block in the delta file.

The rate of growth of a snapshot will be determined by how much disk write activity occurs on your server.
Servers that have disk-write intensive applications, such as SQL and Exchange, will see snapshot files
grow rapidly. On the other hand, servers with mostly static content and fewer disk writes, such as Web
and application servers, will grow at a much slower rate. When you create multiple snapshots, new delta
files are created and the previous delta files become read-only. With multiple snapshots, each delta file
can potentially grow as large as the original disk file.

Different types of snapshot files

*--delta.vmdk file: This is the differential file created when you take a snapshot of a VM. It is also known
as the redo-log file. The delta file is a bitmap of the changes to the base VMDK, thus it can never grow
larger than the base VMDK (except for snapshot overhead space). A delta file will be created for each
snapshot that you create for a VM. An extra delta helper file will also be created to hold any disk changes
when a snapshot is being deleted or reverted. These files are automatically deleted when the snapshot is
deleted or reverted in snapshot manager.

*.vmsd file: This file is used to store metadata and information about snapshots. This file is in text format
and will contain information such as the snapshot display name, unique identifier (UID), disk file name,
etc. It is initially a 0 byte file until you create your first snapshot of a VM. From that point it will populate
the file and continue to update it whenever new snapshots are taken.

This file does not cleanup completely after the snapshots are taken. Once you delete a snapshot, it will still
increment the snapshot's last unique identifier for the next snapshot.

*.vmsn file: This is the snapshot state file, which stores the exact running state of a virtual machine at the
time you take that snapshot. This file will either be small or large depending on if you select to preserve
the VM's memory as part of the snapshot. If you do choose to preserve the VM's memory, then this file will
be a few megabytes larger than the maximum RAM memory allocated to the VM.

This file is similar to the VMware suspended state (.vmss) file. A .vmsn file will be created for each
snapshot taken on the VM; these files are automatically deleted when the snapshot is removed.

Creating snapshots
You can create snapshots either through the Snapshot Manager in the vSphere Client or using the
vmware-cmd command line utility directly on the ESX Service Console or through the vSphere CLI. With
this command, a VM can be either powered on or off. It can also be suspended when creating a snapshot.
If the VM is powered off you will not have the option to snapshot the virtual machine's memory.

Snapshots can be managed using the vSphere Client by connecting either directly to an ESX server or by
connecting to vCenter Server. If you choose to use the command line interface (CLI) instead, the syntax
for creating snapshots is vmware-cmd createsnapshot , i.e. vmware-cmd myvm1.vmx createsnapshot
snap1 'before upgrade' 1 1. The options for quiesce and memory are either 1 for yes or 0 for no. Choosing
1 will quiesce file system writes before taking the snapshot. Choosing 1 for memory will snapshot the VM's
memory state. If you create multiple snapshots, the previous snapshots become read-only once the new
snapshot is created.

Deleting or reverting to snapshots

When you delete all snapshots for a VM, all of the delta files that are created are merged back into the
original VMDK disk file for the VM and then deleted. If you choose to delete only an individual snapshot,
then just that snapshot is merged into its parent snapshot. If you choose to revert to a snapshot, the
current disk and memory states are discarded and the VM is brought back to the reverted-to state.
Whichever snapshot you revert to then becomes the new parent snapshot. The parent snapshot, however,
is not always the most recently taken snapshot. If you revert back to an older snapshot, it then becomes
the parent of the current state of the virtual machine. The parent snapshot is always noted by the "You are
here" label under it in the Snapshot Manager.

You can delete or revert to snapshots using either the vSphere Client or the vmware-cmd command line
utility. Snapshot Manager in the vSphere Client offers more flexibility and is easier to use than the
vSphere CLI. One important distinction between the "Revert to Snapshot" option in the vSphere Client and
the Snapshot Manager is that revert simply takes you back to the last snapshot taken, while Snapshot
Manager gives you the flexibility to choose a specific snapshot to revert to. This is called "Go To" in
Snapshot Manager.

If you use vmware-cmd, the syntax is vmware-cmd removesnapshots, which removes all snapshots,
or vmware-cmd revertsnapshot, which reverts the VM to the parent of the "You are here" state. This
parent may not necessarily be the last snapshot that was taken. If you need to remove or revert to
specific snapshots you must use the vSphere Client instead.

If you revert to a snapshot that does not include memory state the server will power off and once you
power it back on it will be using the previous snapshot. If your snapshot does include memory state, the
VM will briefly pause and then return to the previous snapshot's disk and memory states.

In part two of this article we will cover advanced snapshot topics including how to specify alternate
snapshot directories, excluding virtual disks from snapshots, extra disk space required to delete multiple
snapshots, locating active snapshots and the effect of running snapshots on a VM. Before continuing, test
yourself on VMware snapshots!

Esxcli commands to create vSwiths ?

In ESXi 5.x and 6.x

Note: In ESXi 5.x, most of the legacy commands used in 4.x will continue to work. VMware recommends
using their esxcli equivalents where possible as legacy esxcfg commands will be deprecated in a future
release.

To restore the Management vmkernel interface to the correct vmnic interface:

 View the current vSwitch configuration and vmkernel interface configuration using these
commands:

esxcli network vswitch standard list # list current vswitch configuration

esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware list # list Distributed Switch configuration
esxcli network ip interface list # list vmkernel interfaces and their configuration
esxcli network nic list # display listing of physical adapters and their link state

 Add or remove network cards (known as vmnics) to or from a Standard vSwitch using these
commands:

esxcli network vswitch standard uplink remove --uplink-name=vmnic --vswitch-name=vSwitch # unlink

an uplink
esxcli network vswitch standard uplink add --uplink-name=vmnic --vswitch-name=vSwitch # add an
uplink
 Add or remove network cards (known as vmnics) to or from a vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS)
using these commands:

esxcfg-vswitch -Q vmnic -V dvPort_ID_of_vmnic dvSwitch # unlink/remove a vDS uplink

esxcfg-vswitch -P vmnic -V unused_dvPort_ID dvSwitch # add a vDS uplink

Note: If connectivity was lost when migrating management networking to a Distributed Switch, it
may be necessary to remove or disable the existing management vmkernel interface and recreate
it in a Standard vSwitch port group with the same IP configuration.

 On a vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS), delete an existing VMkernel port using this command:
esxcli network ip interface remove --interface-name=vmkX
 Note: The vmk interface number used for management can be determined by running the esxcli network
ip interface listcommand.

After the unreachable vmkernel port has been removed, it can be recreated on a Standard Switch.

 If an existing Standard Switch does not exist, you can create a new one as well as a port-group to
use with these commands:

esxcli network vswitch standard add --vswitch-name=vSwitch

esxcli network vswitch standard portgroup add --portgroup-name=portgroup --vswitch-name=vSwitch

Note: When creating a virtual switch, there are no linked vmnics by default. You will need to link vmnics
as described earlier in this article.

 To create a VMkernel port and attach it to a portgroup on a Standard vSwitch, run these
commands:

esxcli network ip interface add --interface-name=vmkX --portgroup-name=portgroup

esxcli network ip interface ipv4 set --interface-name=vmkX --ipv4=ipaddress --netmask=netmask--
type=static
Note: By default, the ESXi, the management vmkernel port is vmk0 and resides in a Standard Switch
portgroup called Management Network.

 If the vmnics associated with the management network are VLAN trunks, you may need to specify
a VLAN ID for the management portgroup. To set or correct the VLAN ID required for
management connectivity on a Standard vSwitch, run this command:

esxcli network vswitch standard portgroup set -p portgroup --vlan-id VLAN

 It may be necessary to restart the host's management agents if network connectivity is not
restored despite a correct configuration:

services.sh restart
What is lockdown mode?
To increase the security of your ESXi hosts, you can put them inlockdown mode. When you
enable lockdown mode, no users other than vpxuser have authentication permissions, nor can they
perform operations against the host directly. Lockdown mode forces all operations to be performed
through vCenter Server.

What is CPU Ready Time in vSphere ?

CPU Ready Time is a vSphere metric that records the amount of time a virtual machine is ready to
use CPU but was unable to schedule timebecause all CPU resources (on a ESX host) are busy.

What is CPU Ready % Value ?

CPU ready values that can be assumed OK are below 5% per vCPU. Important – per vCPU. That means
10% total ready on a 4 vCPU virtual machine is about 2,5% per vCPU.
ESXTOP/RESXTOP

 Open Putty and log into your host. Note: You may need to enable SSH in vCenter for the hosts first
 Type esxtop
 Press c for CPU
 Press V for Virtual Machine view
 %USED – (CPU Used time) % of CPU used at current time. This number is represented by 100 X
Number_of_vCPU’s so if you have 4 vCPU’s and your %USED shows 100 then you are using 100% of one
CPU or 25% of four CPU’s.
 %RDY – (Ready) % of time a vCPU was ready to be scheduled on a physical processor but could not
be due to contention. You do not want this above 10% and should look into anything above 5%.
 %CSTP – (Co-Stop) % in time a vCPU is stopped waiting for access to physical CPU high numbers
here represent problems. You do not want this above 5%
 %MLMTD – (Max Limited) % of time vmware was ready to run but was not scheduled due to CPU
Limit set (you have a limit setting)
 %SWPWT – (Swap Wait) – Current page is swapped out

Performance Monitor in vCenter

If you are looking at the Ready/Summation data in the perf chart below for the CPU Ready time, converting it
to a CPU Ready percent value is what provides the proper meaning to the data for understanding whether or
not it is actually a problem. However, keep in mind that other configuration options like CPU Limits can affect
the accumulated CPU Ready time and other VMs vCPU configuration on the same host should be checked as
well as it is not good to have VMs with large amounts of vCPUs running on a host with VMs with single vCPUs
To convert between the CPU ready summation value in vCenter’s performance charts and the CPU ready %
value that you see in esxtop, you must use a formula. At one point VMware had a recommendation that
anything over 5% ready time per vCPU was something to monitor
The formula requires you to know the default update intervals for the performance charts.

These are the default update intervals for each chart:

Realtime:20 seconds
Past Day: 5 minutes (300 seconds)
Past Week: 30 minutes (1800 seconds)
Past Month: 2 hours (7200 seconds)
Past Year: 1 day (86400 seconds)

To calculate the CPU ready % from the CPU ready summation value, use this formula:
(CPU summation value / (<chart default update interval in seconds> * 1000)) * 100 = CPU ready %

Example from the above chart for one day: The Realtime stats for the VM gte19-accal-rds with an average CPU
ready summation value of 359.105.

(359.105 / (20s * 1000)) * 100 = 1.79% CPU ready

Useful Link

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200218
1
Other options to check if you think you have a CPU issue

 Verify that VMware Tools is installed on every virtual machine on the host.
 Compare the CPU usage value of a virtual machine with the CPU usage of other virtual machines 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 virtual machines on the host.
 Determine whether the high ready time for the virtual machine resulted from its CPU usage time
reaching the CPU limit setting. If so, increase the CPU limit on the virtual machine.
 Increase the CPU shares to give the virtual machine 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 virtual machines to guarantee that they
receive the required CPU cycles.
 Increase the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine. This action decreases disk and or
network activity for applications that cache. This might lower disk I/O and reduce the need for the host to
 virtualize the hardware. Virtual machines with smaller resource allocations generally accumulate more CPU
ready time.
 Reduce the number of virtual CPUs on a virtual machine to only the number required to execute the
workload. For example, a single-threaded application on a four-way virtual machine 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.
 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 virtual machines onto the new host.
 Upgrade the physical CPUs or cores on the host if necessary.
 Use the newest version of hypervisor software, and enable CPU-saving features such as TCP
Segmentation Offload, large memory pages, and jumbo frames.

How many simultaneous vmotions are possible in 1gigs n/w?

With vSphere 5.1 and a 1 Gbps network connection, up to 4 VMs can vMotion concurrently per host. If the
infrastructure uses a 10 Gbps connection, each host can vMotion up to 8 VMs at once.

What is "shared nothing" vmotion and its pre-requisites

Shared nothing live migration is a feature of Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0 and VMware vSphere 5.1 that allows a
virtual machine (VM) to be moved from one physical server with direct-attached storage to another physical
server with direct-attached storage.

What is a slot-size and how is it calculated?

“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”

The slot has two parts, the CPU component and the memory component. Each of them has its
own calculation. If there are no virtual machine resource reservations in the cluster, then the slot size (for
ESXi 5 at least) is 32 Mhz for CPU and 0 MBs + overhead for memory.

In other words a slot size is the worst case CPU and Memory reservation scenario in a cluster. This directly
leads to the first “gotcha”:

HA uses the highest CPU reservation of any given VM and the highest memory reservation of any given VM.

If VM1 has 2GHZ and 1024GB reserved and VM2 has 1GHZ and 2048GB reserved the slot size for memory will
be 2048MB+memory overhead and the slot size for CPU will be 2GHZ.

Now how does HA calculate how many slots are available per host?

Of course we need to know what the slot size for memory and CPU is first. Then we divide the total available
CPU resources of a host by the CPU slot size and the total available Memory Resources of a host by the
memory slot size. This leaves us with a slot size for both memory and CPU. The most restrictive number is the
amount of slots for this host. If you have 25 CPU slots but only 5 memory slots the amount of available slots
for this host will be 5.

As you can see this can lead to very conservative consolidation ratios. With vSphere this is something that’s
configurable. If you have just one VM with a really high reservation you can set the following advanced settings
to lower the slot size being used during these calculations: das.slotCpuInMHz or das.slotMemInMB. To avoid
not being able to power on the VM with high reservations these VM will take up multiple slots. Keep in mind
that when you are low on resources this could mean that you are not able to power-on this high reservation VM
as resources are fragmented throughout the cluster instead of located on a single host.
 Host Failures?

Now what happens if you set the number of allowed host failures to 1?
The host with the most slots will be taken out of the equation. If you have 8 hosts with 90 slots in total but 7
hosts each have 10 slots and one host 20 this single host will not be taken into account. Worst case scenario!
In other words the 7 hosts should be able to provide enough resources for the cluster when a failure of the “20
slot” host occurs.

And of course if you set it to 2 the next host that will be taken out of the equation is the host with the second
most slots and so on.

1.What are the products included in VMware vSphere 5.5 Bundle ?

 VMware ESXi
 VMware vCenter Server
 VMware vSphere Client and Web Client
 vSphere Update Manager
 VMware vCenter Orchestrator
2.What type of Hyper-visor VMware ESXi is ?
 VMware ESXi is Bare-metal hypervisor. You can directly install on server hardware.

VMware Hypervisor
3.What is the role of VMware vCenter server?

 vCenter provides a centralized management platform and framework for all ESXi hosts and their
respective VMs. vCenter server allows IT administrators to deploy, manage, monitor, automate, and secure
a virtual infrastructure in a centralized fashion. To help provide scalability , vCenter Server leverages a back-
end database (Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle are both supported, among others) that stores all the data
about the hosts and VMs.
 vCenter Server – Overview
4. Is it possible install vCenter server on Linux hosts ?

 No.But Pre-build vCenter appliance is available in VMware portal which is Linux based.You can import
the appliance as virtual machine.
5.How to update the VMware ESXi hosts with latest patches ?

 We can update the ESXi hosts using VMware Update Manager(VUM). We can use this VUM add-on
package on Windwos based vCenter server and Linux based vCenter server (vCenter appliance)
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.

vSphere Client
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 doen’t require any software. You can directly connect
using web browser.But still VUM is managed through vSphere Client .

vSphere Client:
 vSphere Client – Login
vSphere web-client:

vSphere web client

8.What is the use of VMware vCenter Orchestrator ?

 vCneter Orchestrator is used for automation on various vSphere products.

What are the features included in VMware vSphere 5.5 ?

 vSphere High Availabitliy (HA)

 vSphere Fault Tolerance
 vSphere vMotion
 vSphere Storage vMotion
 vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
 virtual SAN (VSAN)
 Flash Read Cache
 Storage I/O Control
 Network I/O Control
 vSphere Replication
10.What is the use of vSphere High Availability(HA)? Where it can be applied ?

 VMware vSphere HA minimize the VM’s unplanned downtime by restarting the VM guests on next
available server ESXi node inacase of failure on current ESXI node. VMware HA must be enabled to reduce
the VM unplanned downtime.

VMware HA

Will vSphere HA help on VM failures too ?

 In an order to detect the VM failures, you need to enable VM Failure Monitoring. So that it detects the
Disk I/O and sends the internal heartbeat to check the VM all the time. If the VM is stopped functioning, VM
will be restarted automatically by vSphere HA.
12.What is the use of vMotion ?

 Using vMotion feature,we can move the running VM’s from one ESXi host to another ESXi host without
any downtime. vMotion copies the VM’s in-memory contents to the destination server and freeze the
operation on current ESXi host and resumes the VM’s on remote ESXI node.
 VMware vMotion
What is the use of Storage vMotion ?

 vMotion is possible only when you have Shared storage like FC-SAN,ISCSI-SAN or NFS. If you want to
move the VM from one datastore to another datastore without any downtime,then you need to perform
storage vMotion.

vMotion
and Storage vMotion
Note: You can perform the vMotion and Storage vMotion together without any downtime.
14.Why vMotion feature is not used/can’t use in vSphere HA ?
 vMotion is used for planned migrations and possible only where the source and destination ESXI hosts
are running properly.vSPhere HA is used to reduce the downtime due to failures of physical ESXi hosts.So
When the failure accours on ESXi nodes, there is no time to perform vMotion and can’t be used.
15.Is there any way to prevent the VM’s unplanned downtime using vSphere HA ?

 Yes.You can prevent the unplanned downtime using vSphere falut tollerance along with vSphere HA.

How the vSphere Fault tolerance(FT) works ?

 Using vLockstep technology , vSphere FT maintains the mirrored secondary VM on different ESXi
physical host that is kept in lockstep with the primary.So when the primary ESXi node goes down due to
hardware issue, secondary VM will immediately step-in and provide the service. At this point, this VM will
become primary and secondary aka mirrored VM will be created on possible ESXI host to prevent the further
ESXi failure.

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)

What is vSphere DRS(Distributed Resource Scheduler) ? How it works ?

 vSphere DRS is an intelligent frame works which always monitors the cluster nodes health check and
performs the vMotion automatically whenever required. For an example ,if one of the ESXI cluster host
memory has been utilized more than 90% and due to that lot of paging happening on that server. vSphere
DRS detects such things in quick time and moves few VM’s to another ESXi cluster to least-balance
the cluster nodes without any downtime by leveraging vMotion functionality. It applies for high contention for
CPU utilization too. So vSphere DRS helps to balance the CPU & Memory utilization across the ESXi cluster
nodes.
 Vmware DRS
18. What is vSphere storage DRS ? How it works ?

 vSphere Storage DRS like vSphere DRS but it applies to storage.It helps to balance storage utilization
and performance between data-stores on same ESXi clusters.

What is VSAN ? How it works ?

 VSAN forms the storage pools across the multiple nodes using internal disks and allows you to create
a datastores that spans multiple ESXI hosts. VSAN also protect the data using VM storage profiles and you
can configure it according to your requirement. You need SSD’s(Solid State Drive) to configure VSAN. Click
here to learn more about VSAN.
 VSAN
overview
20.What is Flash Read Cache ?

 vSphere 5.5 supports solid state drive through feature called Flash Read Cache.Using Flash Read
Cache, you can assign a caching space to VM’s like how are you assigning like CPU,Memory and other
resources to VM’s. Solid state drive can provide much better that IOPS compare to normal disks.
 Flash Read Cache
21.What is the use of Storage I/O Control in vSphere 5.5 ?
 You can limit the number of IOPS for each VM.

22.What is the use of network I/O control ?

 Its similar to storage I/O control but its controls the VM’s Network bandwidth.

23.What is vSphere Replication?

 It replicates the complete VM from one datacenter to another datacenter on per VM basis Unlike
hardware replication.

vSphere Replication
Hope I have mostly covered about all the vSphere products and it features in high level.