vSphere Interview Questions and Answers

Find below good interview questions and answers for vSphere Interview or when taking a virtualization interview questions to pass the job interview. These are the common interview questions faced by every virtualization essentials professional certification.

1. What is Virtualization Technology?

Virtualization is the process of separating the physical components of a computing infrastructure from the logic process that demands resource.

Virtualization separates the software on the underlying hardware it resides on and offers us the flexibility of having multiple virtual environments that can take advantage of a single physical resource entity. This allows us to maximize utilization of resources on a single server.

2. What are different types of virtualization?

There are 3 types of virtualization:

  • Operating System Virtualization: The virtualization of a guest operating system on a thin hypervisor that mangers access to hardware resources.
  • Application virtualization: Deploying applications without reliance on an install directly to an operating system. Taking an application and running it without actually installing it on an operating system.
  • Storage virtualization: Gathers storages from different parts of the network or other locations and virtualizes to your hosts as one entity. The presentation of logical storage structures that resides on one or more physical storage devices.

3. What is a Hypervisor and what are different types of Hypervisor?

It is a thin layer of software that gets installed on bear metal and allows creation of multiple VMs in an isolated state. Read more about Hypervisor and its types here.

4. What is vCenter server?

vCenter is a centralized application that servers as a proxy for managing ESX/ESXI hosts and their virtual machines. The vCenter server is a framework that allows third party components, like vCenter consolidated guidelines, vCenter update manager and vCenter converter to be installed on top of vCenter and expand its features. You can also install vCenter client on to the server.

vCenter is a requirement for enterprise features like:

  • VMware vMotion
  • VMware high availability (HA)
  • VMware distributed resource scheduler (DRS)
  • VMware update manager (UM)

Vcenter server features:

  • ESX/ESXI Management
  • VM management
  • Update manager
  • Converter enterprise
  • Templates
  • Access control

5. What are vCenter Extensions?

VMware update manager: provides an automated patch management process for updating ESX/ESXI hosts and virtual machines

VMware converter: a built in physical to virtual (p2v) or virtual to virtual (v2v) tool for migrating physical or virtual machines into a VI infrastrure

Guided consolidation: offers infrastructure analysis for identifying physical machines that are good Virtualization candidates.

vCenter Database Requirements:

  • Supported database
  • IBM DB2
  • Microsoft SQL server 2005 & 2008
  • Oracle 10g & 11g

Defulat DB:

  • Microsoft SQL server express 2005
  • Can be used in production for small environment of up to 5 hosts and 50 VMs

6. Is vCenter a physical or virtual server?

vCenter server can be physical or virtual.

  • Physical requires a dedicated machine.
  • Physical is not at risk of vSphere outages.
  • Virtual can be backed with other VMs.
  • Virtual does not waste an entire server on VC.
  • Virtual can participate in HA and be vmotioned .
  • Virtual is at risk of vSphere outages.

vCenter Server Installation Prerequisites:

  • vCenter needs to be a part of the domain
  • Assign static IP and hostname
  • Create the back end database
  • Determine licensing option

vCenter Port Requirements:

  • 80/443 for web access.
  • 902/903 for heartbeat, ESX Server management, and VM console
  • 8080/8443 for web services
  • 389 & 686 for LDAP and SSL can be changed to any port from 1025 to 65535

7. How to install vCenter Server 4.0 and vSphere Client?

Here is how to install vCenter server 4.0 and vSphere client

8. What is vCenter Host Profile and vCenter Linked Mode?

vCenter Host Profile:

  • Simplified setup and change management for ESX hosts.
  • Easy detection of non-compliance with standard configuration.
  • Automated remediation.

vCenter Linked Mode:

  • Standard vSphere client can access inventory across multiple vCenters.
  • View and search across combined inventory of a group of VC servers.
  • Shared roles and license configurations.

9. What is vCenter Licensing?

Simple license keys instead of files:

  • 1 license per edition
  • 1 key for any hosts

New centralized license key administration in vCenter:

  • No separate license server to manage or monitor
  • Centralized host and license monitoring through vCenter

Licensing components:

  • Product
  • License key
  • Asset

Legacy host licensing:

  • Need licensing server

10. What are the major uses and purpose of VMware Workstation 9?

Here are the main uses and purpose of VMware Workstation 9