5V0-22.23 VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Questions and Answers

The VMware solution that requires vSAN usage is VMware Cloud Foundation. VMware Cloud Foundation is an integrated software stack that bundles compute virtualization (VMware vSphere), storage virtualization (VMware vSAN), network virtualization (VMware NSX), and cloud management and monitoring (VMware vRealize Suite) into a single platform that can be deployed on premises or as a service within a public cloud. VMware Cloud Foundation relies on vSAN as the primary storage solution for its workload domains, which are logical pools of resources that can be used to run different types of workloads. The other options are not correct. VMware Horizon, VMware Telco Cloud Automation, and VMware Aria Automation are VMware solutions that do not require vSAN usage, although they can benefit from it. VMware Horizon is a platform that delivers virtual desktops and applications across a variety of devices and locations, and it can use any supported storage solution, including vSAN. VMware Telco Cloud Automation is a cloud-native orchestration and automation platform that enables communication service providers to accelerate the deployment and lifecycle management of network functions and services across any network and cloud. It can use any supported storage solution, including vSAN. VMware Aria Automation is not a valid VMware solution name. References: VMware Cloud Foundation Overview; VMware Horizon Overview; VMware Telco Cloud Automation Overview

An all-flash vSAN ESA cluster with four nodes can satisfy the storage policies that require FTT=2 (RAID-1 Mirroring) or FTT=2 (RAID-6 Erasure Coding). These policies mean that the cluster can tolerate two host failures while maintaining data availability and redundancy. RAID-1 Mirroring creates three replicas of each object across different hosts, while RAID-6 Erasure Coding splits each object into four data segments and two parity segments across different hosts. Both policies require at least four hosts in the cluster to meet the FTT=2 requirement. The other options are not correct. An all-flash vSAN ESA cluster with four nodes cannot satisfy the storage policies that require FTT=3 (RAID-1 Mirroring) or FTT=1 (RAID-5 Erasure Coding). These policies mean that the cluster can tolerate three or one host failure respectively, but they require more or less hosts than four to do so. RAID-1 Mirroring with FTT=3 requires at least six hosts in the cluster to create four replicas of each object, while RAID-5 Erasure Coding with FTT=1 requires at least three hosts in the cluster to split each object into two data segments and one parity segment. References: vSAN Express Storage Architecture; RAID Configurations, FTT, and Host Requirements

The correct answer is D, add additional capacity disks to each disk group. This is because adding capacity disks to existing disk groups is the fastest and easiest way to expand the capacity of the vSAN datastore without disrupting any ongoing operations or requiring additional hardware. The administrator can add up to five capacity disks per disk group in vSAN OSA, which means each host can have up to 25 capacity disks in total. The administrator should make sure that the new capacity disks are unformatted and not partitioned, so that vSAN can recognize and claim them. The administrator should also manually rebalance the cluster after adding the capacity disks to distribute the data evenly across the new devices. The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

• A, enable Deduplication and Compression on the cluster level, is incorrect because enabling Deduplication and Compression is not a recommended way to expand the capacity of the vSAN datastore. Deduplication and Compression is a space efficiency feature that reduces the logical space consumption of data by eliminating duplicate blocks and applying compression algorithms. However, enabling Deduplication and Compression requires a full data evacuation and resynchronization, which can be disruptive and time-consuming. Deduplication and Compression also introduces additional CPU and memory overhead, which can affect the performance of the cluster. Deduplication and Compression is only supported on all-flash clusters, not on hybrid clusters.
• B, add additional capacity by adding a disk on one host and creating a storage pool, is incorrect because creating a storage pool is not supported in vSAN OSA. A storage pool is a new configuration introduced in vSAN 8 ESA, where all disks are treated as capacity disks and use a new algorithm to distribute data acrossthem. This configuration is not compatible with vSAN OSA, which uses a disk group configuration where one disk is designated as a cache disk and the rest are capacity disks. To use a storage pool, the administrator would need to migrate to vSAN 8 ESA on a new cluster with new hardware.
• C, add additional capacity by adding a vSAN ReadyNode to the cluster, is incorrect because adding a vSAN ReadyNode to the cluster is not the fastest or easiest way to expand the capacity of the vSAN datastore. A vSAN ReadyNode is a preconfigured server that meets the hardware requirements for running vSAN. Adding a vSAN ReadyNode to the cluster would require additional hardware procurement, installation, and configuration. It would also increase the compute capacity of the cluster, which may not be necessary for the workload. Adding a vSAN ReadyNode would also trigger a resynchronization of data across the cluster, which can affect the performance and availability of the cluster. References:
• VMware vSAN Specialist v2 Exam Preparation Guide, page 10

To expand disk group #2 to have three capacity devices, the vSAN administrator should add the new capacity device to the disk group and vSAN will automatically rebalance. This action allows the administrator to increase the storage capacity of the disk group without disrupting any ongoing operations or evacuating any data. vSAN will automatically distribute data across all devices in the disk group to balance performance and utilization. The other options are not correct. Creating a new disk group with a single capacity device and then migrating the existing capacity devices is not necessary, as it would require more steps and resources than adding a device to an existing disk group. Putting the entire ESXi host or the disk group in maintenance mode and evacuating all data is not required, as it would cause downtime and data movement that could be avoided by adding a device to an existing disk group. References: Add Devices to the Disk Group; Expanding a vSAN Cluster

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

The host rebuild reserve is a feature that allows vSAN to reserve space in the cluster for vSAN to be able to repair in case of a single host failure. This reservation is set to one host worth of capacity, which means that if one host in the vSAN cluster fails and no longer contributes storage, there is still sufficient capacity remaining in the cluster to rebuild and re-protect all vSAN objects. This feature prevents the creation of new VMs or powering on VMs if such operations consume the reserved space. By default, the host rebuild reserve is disabled, but it can be enabled in the vSAN Services configuration. The other options are not related to the hostrebuild reserve. References: vSAN Capacity Management in v7.0U1; Configure Reserved Capacity

The reason why there are objects in the pending category of the scheduled resyncing in the cluster monitor is that the delay timer has not expired. The delay timer is a configurable setting that determines how long vSAN waits before repairing a non-compliant object after placing a host in a failed state or maintenance mode. The default value is 60 minutes, but it can be changed in the vSAN Services configuration. The pending category displays the objects with the expired delay timer that cannot be resynchronized due to insufficient resources in the current cluster or the vSAN FTT policy set on the cluster not being met. The other options are not correct. These objects do not belong to virtual machines that are powered off, as vSAN resynchronizes all objects regardless of their power state. Object resynchronization does not need to be started manually, as vSAN initiates it automatically when the delay timer expires. There are not too many objects to be synchronized, as vSAN can handle multiple resynchronization tasks in parallel. References: Monitor the Resynchronization Tasks in the vSAN Cluster; About vSAN Cluster Resynchronization

 To perform maintenance on one of the hosts in a three-node vSAN cluster with the best availability for the VMs with the least effort and data transfer, the maintenance mode option that should be used is Ensure accessibility. This option migrates only enough components to ensure that all accessible VMs remain accessible, but does not guarantee full data redundancy or policy compliance. This option is also the only evacuation mode available for a three-node cluster or a cluster with three fault domains, as there are not enough hosts to perform full data migration or re-protection after a failure. The other options are not correct. Migrating all VMs and their storage from the host to a different storage system or a different vSphere cluster would require more effort and data transfer than using Ensure accessibility, as well as additional resources and configuration steps. Full data migration is not possible in a three-nodecluster, as it would require at least four hosts to evacuate all data from one host and maintain full redundancy and policy compliance. References: Place a Member of vSAN Cluster in Maintenance Mode; Working with Maintenance Mode

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 protect a virtual machine against a disk or disk group failure, the storage policy must have a failure tolerance method (FTM) of RAID-1 or RAID-6 and a failure to tolerate (FTT) value of at least 1. RAID-1 mirrors the data across multiple disk groups, while RAID-6 uses erasure coding to stripe the data and parity information across multiple disk groups. RAID-5 is not suitable for this scenario, as it can only tolerate one disk failure per stripe. FTT 2 or 3 would require more disk groups than available in the cluster. Therefore, the correct options are C and E. References: 1, page 8; 2, section 3.1

To prevent vCenter notifications of vSAN Health status during a scheduled maintenance window, the administrator can disable the alarm from the HTML client. This will suppress the alerts for a specified duration or until the alarm is re-enabled. Disabling the performance service, running performance diagnostics, or disabling SNMP service will not affect the vSAN Health status notifications. References: [VMware vSAN Specialist v2 EXAM 5V0-22.23], page 25

To configure vSAN Direct, the administrator must meet two requirements: a valid vSAN license for the vSAN cluster and unclaimed disks in the hosts for vSAN Direct. A vSAN license is required to enable vSAN features and services, including vSAN Direct. Unclaimed disks are local storage devices that are not used by vSAN or any other service, and can be claimed by vSAN Direct to create datastores for persistent storage. The other options are not requirements for vSAN Direct. HA is an optional feature that can be enabled on any cluster, but is not specific to vSAN Direct. A dedicated network for vSAN Direct is not necessary, as vSAN Direct uses the same network as vSAN. An integration with vSAN File Services is not required, as vSAN Direct does not provide file shares, but block storage. References: Set Up vSAN Direct for vSphere with Tanzu; vSAN Licensing Guide

The reason why the vSAN administrator cannot find any vSAN performance statistics on the cluster summary page is that the vSAN performance service is not enabled. The vSAN performance service is a feature that collects and analyzes performance metrics and displays them in graphical charts in vCenter. The vSAN performance service must be turned on manually for each vSAN cluster, as it is not enabled by default. The other options are not correct. The integration of vRealize Operations Manager with the vSAN cluster is not required to view vSAN performance statistics, as they are available in vCenter. The administrator’s permissions on the cluster level do not affect the visibility of vSAN performance statistics, as they are accessible to any user who can view the cluster. vSAN performance statistics are not only available via CLI, as they can also be viewed in vCenter using the vSAN performance service. References: About the vSAN Performance Service; Enable or Disable the Performance Service

When a host in a vSAN stretched cluster goes offline, the data components on the hosts will be marked as degraded. This means that the data is still available, but the redundancy level is reduced. vSAN will try to rebuild the missing components on another host in the same fault domain, if there is enough capacity and resources. If the host comes back online within 60 minutes, vSAN will resync the data and restore the redundancy level. If the host does not come back online within 60 minutes, vSAN will rebuild the missing components on another fault domain, if there is enough capacity and resources. This will incur additional network traffic across the witness link. References: VMware vSAN Specialist v2 EXAM 5V0-22.23, page 17

To satisfy the customer’s needs for high-performance, low-latency applications at edge locations, the best deployment option is to use a new three-node vSAN 8.0 All-Flash Cluster with OSA in each edge location and configure each application VM with a RAID-1 VM storage policy. This option will provide the following benefits:

• All-flash clusters offer the highest performance and lowest latency for vSAN, as they use flash devices for both cache and capacity tiers. Flash devices have faster read and write operations than magnetic disks, and they also support advanced features such as deduplication, compression, and encryption.
• OSA stands for One Socket Architecture, which means that each host has only one CPU socket with multiple cores. This reduces the licensing cost and complexity of vSphere and vSAN, as well as the power consumption and cooling requirements of the hosts. OSA also improves the performance of vSAN by eliminating the NUMA effect, which is the latency caused by accessing memory or devices across different CPU sockets.
• RAID-1 is a mirroring technique that creates two copies of each data component and places them on different hosts. This provides high availability and fault tolerance for the application VMs, as they can survive the failure of one host or disk. RAID-1 also offers better performance than RAID-5 or RAID-6, as it does not incur any parity overhead or additional write operations.

The other options are not optimal for the customer’s needs, as they either sacrifice performance or capacity. Option A uses RAID-5, which is an erasure coding technique that splits each data component into three data segments and one parity segment, and distributes them across four hosts. This reduces the capacity consumption by 25%, but it also increases the write latency and network traffic, as each write operation requires four hosts to participate. Option C uses ESA, which stands for Enterprise Storage Architecture, which means that each host has two CPU sockets with multiple cores. This increases the licensing cost and complexity of vSphere and vSAN, as well as the power consumption and cooling requirements of the hosts. ESA also introduces the NUMA effect, which can degrade the performance of vSAN by adding latency to access memory or devices across different CPU sockets. Option D uses RAID-5 with ESA, which combines the disadvantages of both options A and C.

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 Capacity Reserve feature in vSAN 8.0 OSA reduces the amount of capacity reserved for transient and rebuild operations by using a slack space threshold. This threshold is calculated based on the size of the largest component in the cluster and the number of failures to tolerate. If the used space on vSAN datastore exceeds the suggested slack space threshold, the feature will not operate properly and vSAN will revert to using the host rebuild reserve threshold. The other scenarios will not affect the Capacity Reserve feature. References: [VMware vSAN Specialist v2 EXAM 5V0-22.23], page 28

To ensure the latest network driver is installed on the NIC before remediation, the vSAN administrator should add an individual component to the vLCM image that has the updated NIC driver. This action allows the administrator to override the driver provided by the vendor add-on and use a newer version that is compatible with the ESXi version and the hardware device. The administrator can add an individual component to the vLCM image by importing it from a ZIP file or selecting it from the vLCM depot. The other options are not correct. Making sure the vLCM image is configured to use the most recent version of the vendor add-on will not help, as the required NIC driver is a newer version than the one provided by the vendor add-on. Removing the vendor add-on from the vLCM image or modifying the vLCM image to omit the NIC driver will not ensure the latest network driver is installed on the NIC, as these actions will leave the NIC without any driver update. Manually installing or updating the network driver on the servers is not recommended, as it might cause inconsistency and non-compliance in the vLCM image. References: vSphere Lifecycle Manager Image Components; [Add an Individual Component to an Image]

To upgrade multiple vSAN Witness nodes with vLCM (single image management) that are used for vSAN Stretched and two-node Clusters, the administrator can upgrade two witness node types: appliance witness node and nested witness node. An appliance witness node is a virtual ESXi host that runs on a physical ESXi host and contains the witness components of VM objects stored in the vSAN cluster. A nested witness node is a virtual ESXi host that runs on another virtual ESXi host and contains the witness components of VM objects stored in the vSAN cluster. Both types of witness nodes can be managed by vLCM as independent nodes since vSphere 7.0 Update 3, as long as they are version 7.0 Update 2 or later. The other options are not correct. A shared witness node is a witness node that serves multiple vSAN clusters, which is not supported by vLCM. A dedicated witness node is a witness node that serves only one vSAN cluster, which is not a specific type of witness node. A physical witness node is aphysical ESXi host that contains the witness components of VM objects stored in the vSAN cluster, which cannot be upgraded by vLCM. References: vSphere Lifecycle Manager and the vSAN Witness Hosts; Shared Witness for 2-Node vSAN Deployments