5V0-22.23 VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Questions and Answers

 If the administrator did not explicitly assign a storage policy when provisioning a new VM on a vSAN datastore, the result is that the VM objects will be protected based on the vSAN Default Storage Policy configurations. The vSAN Default Storage Policy is assigned to all VM objects if no other vSAN policy is assigned when provisioning a VM. The default policy contains vSAN rule sets and a set of basic storage capabilities, such as Failures to tolerate set to 1, Number of disk stripes per object set to 1, and Thin provisioning. The other options are not correct. The VM provisioning will not fail, as vSAN requires that every VM has at least one storage policy. The vSphere Web Client will not choose the last vSAN Storage Policy used, as it will always apply the default policy if no other policy is selected. No data protection will not be applied to the VM objects, as they will have at least one replica based on the default policy. References: About the vSAN Default Storage Policy; Using vSAN Policies

The Skyline Health interval validates online if there are new Health Checks available for vSAN every 24 hours. This means that vSAN checks for new health checks from VMware Analytics Cloud once a day and updates the vSAN Health Service accordingly. The other options are not correct, as they do not match the actual frequency of the online validation. References: About the vSAN Skyline Health

To implement HCI mesh between two clusters on vSAN that are located in geographically separate sites, the vSAN administrator should consider the following requirements:

• Either Layer 2 or Layer 3 communications can be used. HCI mesh supports both Layer 2 and Layer 3 network configurations, as long as the network latency and bandwidth requirements are met3
• The configuration must meet the same latency and bandwidth requirement as local vSAN. HCI mesh requires a network latency of less than or equal to 5 ms RTT between any two hosts in the participating clusters, and a network bandwidth of at least 10 Gbps for the vSAN network vmkernel port3 References: 3: VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Exam Preparation Guide, page 15

Deploying the application on a new cluster with vSAN 8.0 ESA using a new hardware design is the correct answer because it will satisfy the customer’s requirement for low latency. vSAN 8.0 ESA is a new architecture that uses a storage pool configuration where all disks are treated as capacity disks and use a new algorithm to distribute data across them. This improves the I/O flow, reduces the write amplification, and eliminates the cache tier bottleneck. Using a new hardware design with all-flash disks or NVMe disks will further enhance the performance and latency of the application, as these disks have faster read and write speeds than hybrid disks. Deploying the new applications on the existing cluster with a RAID-6 VM storage policy and an additionalstripe width of 4, deploying the application on a new cluster with vSAN 8.0 OSA using the existing hybrid configuration, and performing an in-place upgrade from vSAN 7.0 U2 OSA to vSAN 8.0 ESA are not valid or optimal solutions for this scenario. Deploying the new applications on the existing cluster with a RAID-6 VM storage policy and an additional stripe width of 4 will increase the resiliency and availability of the data, but it will also increase the network traffic, disk space consumption, and parity calculation overhead, which will negatively affect the latency and performance of the application. Deploying the application on a new cluster with vSAN 8.0 OSA using the existing hybrid configuration will not improve the latency significantly, as vSAN 8.0 OSA still uses the same disk group configuration as vSAN 7.0 U2 OSA, where one disk is designated as a cache disk and the rest are capacity disks. The cache disk can still become a bottleneck for high-performance applications, especially if it is not an SSD or NVMe disk. Performing an in-place upgrade from vSAN 7.0 U2 OSA to vSAN 8.0 ESA is not possible, as vSAN ESA requires a different hardware design than vSAN OSA. The existing disk groups need to be deleted and all disks need to be erased before switching to vSAN ESA. References:

• [VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Exam Preparation Guide], page 6
• What’s New in VMware vSAN 8.0

The two prerequisites for using the TRIM and UNMAP capability of vSAN are:

• B. The vSAN cluster is an all-flash architecture. TRIM and UNMAP are only supported on all-flash vSAN clusters, as they can reclaim space from flash devices that use thin provisioning. TRIM and UNMAP are not supported on hybrid vSAN clusters, as they cannot reclaim space from magnetic disks that use thick provisioning1.
• D. TRIM and UNMAP is enabled. TRIM and UNMAP are disabled by default in vSAN, as they might have a performance impact on some workloads. To enable TRIM and UNMAP on a vSAN cluster, the administrator must use the following RVC command: vsan.unmap_support –enable2. After enabling TRIM and UNMAP, the administrator must power off and then power on all VMs that use the vSAN datastore.

To allocate additional storage from another vSAN enabled vSphere cluster to this vSAN enabled Cluster, the administrator should use the vSAN HCI Mesh feature. This feature allows a vSAN cluster to consume storage resources from another vSAN cluster without requiring the hosts to be part of the same cluster. This way, the administrator can leverage the unused or underutilized storage capacity from another cluster and avoid purchasing new hardware or migrating VMs. The vSAN HCI Mesh feature also supports storage policies, encryption, deduplication and compression, and erasure coding across clusters12 References: 1: VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Exam Preparation Guide, page 15 2: VMware vSAN 7 Update 1 - HCI Mesh 3

To introspect multiple performance metrics of a single virtual machine, such as latency, throughput, IOPS, and congestion, the feature that should be used is I/O Trip Analyzer. This feature allows the administrator to diagnose the virtual machine I/O latency issues by providing a breakdown of the latencies at each layer of the vSAN stack, such as VM, host, network, and disk group. The other options are not correct, as they do not provide multiple performance metrics of a single virtual machine. esxcli is a command-line tool that can be used to manage various aspects of ESXi hosts, but it does not provide detailed performance analysis of virtual machines. Skyline Health is a feature that provides proactive notifications and recommendations for software and hardware issues based on VMware Analytics Cloud, but it does not provide granular performance metrics of virtual machines. llOlnsiqht is not a valid feature name in vSAN. References: Use I/O Trip Analyzer; Monitoring vSAN Performance

To create a Kerberos secured NFS v4.1 file share, the administrator needs to provide the following information during the configuration of the File Service:

• Active Directory Domain: The domain name of the Active Directory server that provides Kerberos authentication service for the NFS server and clients. For example, example.com.
• User Account: The user name of the Active Directory account that has permissions to join the NFS server to the domain and create service principal names (SPNs) for the NFS server. For example, administrator@example.com.
• Password: The password of the Active Directory account that is used for authentication. For example, P@ssw0rd.

These information are required to enable Kerberos security for NFS 4.1 and allow the NFS server to obtain a Kerberos ticket from the Active Directory server. The administrator also needs to specify the NFS share name, path, and access permissions1 References: 1: VMware vSphere Storage Guide, page 118

To spread the components across storage devices as much as possible, the vSAN administrator can configure disk striping in either OSA or ESA. Disk striping is a policy attribute that defines the number of capacity devices across which each replica of a storage object is striped. A higher number of stripes can result in better performance and availability, but also consumes more storage space. Disk striping can be configured in OSA by using the Number of disk stripes per object policy attribute, or in ESA by using the Striping Width policy attribute12 References: 1: VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Exam Preparation Guide, page 14 2: VMware vSAN Design and Sizing Guide, page 32

The minimum required number of hosts to provide data redundancy for a vSAN stretched cluster using dual-site mirroring and local protection with 1 failure - RAID-1 (Mirroring) is six hosts. This is because a vSAN stretched cluster requires at least three hosts per site, and each site must have enough hosts to tolerate one host failure. Therefore, the minimum configuration is three hosts per site, plus one witness host at a third site, for a total of six hosts. References: [VMware vSAN Specialist v2 EXAM 5V0-22.23], page 14

Two characteristics of the vSAN Data-At-Rest Encryption (DARE) are that it is Software Defined and works independently of the Cache or Capacity drives installed on the Nodes, and that it continues to operate unaffected during downtime on vCenter Server. DARE is a feature that encrypts all data stored on vSAN disks using AES-256 XTS mode. It does not require Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) to work, as it uses software-based encryption keys that are generated by an external Key Management Server (KMS) or a vSphere Native Key Provider. DARE also does not depend on the type or size of the disks used in the vSAN cluster, as it encrypts data after all other processing, such as deduplication and compression, is performed. DARE can function even when the vCenter Server is offline or unavailable, as it uses key persistence to store the encryption keys on the ESXi hosts or in a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The hosts can access the keys without contacting the KMS or the vCenter Server. The other options are notcorrect, as they do not describe DARE accurately. DARE does not need to be enabled together with the vSAN Data-In-Transit encryption, as they are independent features that can be enabled or disabled separately. Data-In-Transit encryption encrypts data that is transmitted between hosts in a vSAN cluster using secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates. DARE is supported on Stretched Cluster environments, as it can encrypt data across multiple sites using site affinity rules. 

The impact to any virtual machine that was running on the failed host using vSANPolicy1 is that each virtual machine will be restarted on another vSAN host using vSphere HA. This is because vSANPolicy1 has a Failures to Tolerate setting of 1 failure - RAID-5 (Erasure Coding), which means that each object has four components (three data and one parity) distributed across four hosts. If one host fails, the object can still be accessed with the remaining three components,and vSphere HA will restart the virtual machine on another host. vSAN will also try to rebuild the missing component on another host, if there is enough capacity and resources. The other options are incorrect because they either assume that the object is unavailable or that the recovery process is delayed or impossible. References: [VMware vSAN Specialist v2 EXAM 5V0-22.23], page 16

To enable vSAN ESA, two requirements that need to be met are: vSAN Standard license or higher, and vSAN ReadyNodes configuration. vSAN Standard license or higher is required to use vSAN ESA, as it is a feature that is only available in vSAN 8.0 or later versions. vSAN ESA is an optional, alternative architecture to vSAN OSA that is designed to process and store data with higher efficiency, scalability, and performance. vSAN ReadyNodes configuration is required to use vSAN ESA, as it is a hardware configuration that is pre-configured, tested, and certified for VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Software. Each vSAN ReadyNode is optimally configured for vSAN ESA with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, and storage NVMe devices. The other options are not correct. vSAN Build Your Own configuration is not supported for vSAN ESA, as it might not meet the hardware requirements or compatibility for vSAN ESA. vSAN Witness Appliance is not required to use vSAN ESA, as it is only needed for stretched cluster or two-node cluster configurations. References: vSAN Express Storage Architecture; vSAN ReadyNode Hardware Guidance

Utilizing Network I/O Control and isolating vSAN traffic in a VLAN are the two actions that should be taken to configure the new vSAN cluster to meet the requirements. Network I/O Control allows the vSAN administrator to create network resource poolsand assign bandwidth shares or reservations to different traffic types, such as vSAN, vMotion, or management. This ensures that vSAN traffic has guaranteed bandwidth during contention and can achieve better performance and availability. Isolating vSAN traffic in a VLAN enhances the security of the cluster by preventing unauthorized access or interference from other network segments. It also simplifies the network configuration and management by reducing the broadcast domain and avoiding IP address conflicts. Creating static routes between the vSAN hosts, using IOPS Limit rules in storage policies, and enabling jumbo frames are not necessary or recommended actions for this scenario. Static routes are not required for vSAN communication, as vSAN uses multicast or unicast depending on the version and configuration. IOPS Limit rules are used to limit the IOPS allocated to an object, which can degrade the performance and latency of the application. Jumbo frames can improve the network efficiency and throughput, but they are not mandatory for vSAN and require consistent configuration across all network devices. References:

• Network I/O Control
• vSAN Network Design Guide

VMware Cloud on AWS is a service that delivers a fully managed VMware SDDC on AWS infrastructure. It uses vSAN as the mandatory, primary storage for the SDDC clusters. vSAN provides a high-performance, resilient, and secure shared storage solution for the VMware Cloud on AWS environment. The other options are not correct, as vSAN is not mandatory or primary for them. VMware Horizon, VMware Aria Automation, and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition can use vSAN as an optional or secondary storage solution, but they can also use other types of storage. References: , section 1.1; , section 1.2

To add 30 additional vSAN ReadyNodes to an existing vSAN cluster with the fastest approach, the vSAN administrator should use a Host Profile that was extracted from an existing host. AHost Profile is a configuration template that captures the settings of a reference host and applies them to other hosts or clusters. This way, the administrator can quickly and consistently configure multiple hosts with the same settings, such as network, storage, security, and services. The other options are not correct. Running vim-cmd to capture and apply the configuration from an existing host is not as fast or convenient as using a Host Profile, as it requires running commands on each host individually. Launching Quickstart to Add Hosts to a vSAN Cluster is not possible, as Quickstart is only available for new clusters or clusters that were configured through Quickstart. Cloning the ESXi boot partition to all new hosts is not recommended, as it might cause conflicts or errors with the host identity, network settings, or licenses. References: Configuring Hosts Using Host Profile; Using Quickstart to Configure and Expand a vSAN Cluster

To shut down the vSAN cluster using the Shutdown Cluster Wizard, the administrator needs to turn off High Availability (HA) before starting the wizard. This is because HA monitors the cluster for host failures and attempts to restart the affected VMs on other hosts. If HA is not turned off, the cluster might register host shutdowns as failures and trigger unnecessary VM restarts, which can interfere with the graceful shutdown process. Therefore, the administrator should disable HA from the Configure tab of the cluster before using the Shutdown Cluster Wizard12 References: 1: Shut Down the vSAN Cluster Using the Shutdown Cluster Wizard 3 2: Manually Shut Down and Restart the vSAN Cluster 4

To create an image using vSphere Lifecycle Manager, the mandatory requirement is to specify the ESXi version. An image is a collection of software components that define the desired state of hosts in a cluster. An image must include at least one ESXi version component, which determines the base hypervisor software for the hosts. Optionally, an image can also include other components, such as vendor add-ons, firmware and drivers add-ons, or custom components. The other options are not correct. A component is a generic term for any software element that can be included in an image, but it is not a specific type of component. A firmwareand drivers add-on is an optional component that provides firmware and drivers updates for hardware devices on the hosts. A vendor add-on is an optional component that provides vendor-specific software for the hosts. References: About Images; Create an Image

To avoid storage policy non-compliance, the vSAN maintenance mode option that should be used is Full data migration. This option evacuates all data from the host to other hosts in the cluster and maintains the current object compliance state. This means that the VM objects will have access to all their replicas and will be compliant with their assigned storage policies. The other options might result in storage policy non-compliance, as they do not guarantee full data redundancy or policy adherence. Ensure accessibility only migrates the components that are essential for running the VMs, but might not have access to all their replicas. Partial maintenance mode is not a valid option for vSAN clusters. No data migration does not evacuate any data from the host and might result in VM unavailability or data loss. References: Working with Maintenance Mode; Place a Member of vSAN Cluster in Maintenance Mode