cool

o ks-first-safe.cfg Installs ESX on the first detected disk and preserves the VMFS datastores on the disk.
o ks-first.cfg Installs ESX on the first detected disk.
o The default root password is mypassword.
o /boot and vmkcore are physical partitions. /, swap, /var/log, and all the optional partitions are stored on a virtual disk called esxconsole-
<system-uuid>/esxconsole.vmdk. The virtual disk is stored in a VMFS volume.
o You cannot define the sizes of the /boot, vmkcore, and /vmfs partitions when you use the graphical 220 702 or text installation modes. You can define
these partition sizes when you do a scripted installation.
o ESX Required Partitions
Mount Point Type Size Location
/boot ext3 1.25GB of free space and includes the /boot and vmkcore
partitions. The /boot partition alone requires
1100MB.
Physical partition
N/A swap 600MB recommended minimum 1600MB maximum. Virtual disk in a VMFS volume
/ ext3 Based on the size of the /usr partition. By default, the
minimum size is 5GB and no /usr partition is defined.
Virtual disk in a VMFS volume
N/A VMFS3 For VMFS volumes hosting esxconsole.vmdk: 1200MB and
an additional 10GB. VMFS2 is supported in read-only
mode to import legacy VMs.
Physical partition.
N/A vmkcore See /boot Physical partition
o ESX Optional Partitions
Mount Point Type Recommended Size Location
/home ext3 512MB Virtual disk in a VMFS volume
/tmp ext3 1024MB Virtual disk
/usr ext3 Missing in PDF Virtual disk
/var/log ext3 2000MB Virtual disk. The graphical and text
installers create this partition by
default.
o vihostupdate command applies software updates to ESX4/ESXi4 hosts and installs and updates ESX/ESXi extensions (use vihostupdate35 on
ESX 3.5/ESXi 3.5 hosts.)
o The esxupdate utility is for ESX only.
o You can use the 9L0-403 vihostupdate utility in conjunction with offline bundles or with a depot
o vSphere Databases:
o Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express – up to 5 hosts and 50 VMs. If the machine has Microsoft SQL Native Client installed, remove it before
installing vCenter Server with the bundled database. If the machine has MSXML Core Services 6.0 installed, remove it before installing
o Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – Windows XP, apply MDAC 2.8 SP1 to the client. Use the SQL Native Client driver (version 9.x) for the client.
Ensure that the machine has a valid ODBC DSN entry. Remove MSXML Core Services 6.0 before
o Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – Windows XP, apply MDAC 2.8 SP1 to the client. Use the SQL Native Client driver (version 10.x) for the client.
Ensure that the machine has a valid ODBC DSN entry.
o Oracle 10g – If necessary, first apply patch 10.2.0.3 (or later) to the client and server. Then apply patch 5699495 to the client. Ensure that
the machine has a valid ODBC DSN entry.
o Oracle 11g – Ensure that the machine has a valid ODBC DSN entry.
o Even though vCenter Server is supported on 64-bit operating systems, the vCenter Server system must have a 32-bit DSN. This requirement
applies to all supported databases. By default, any DSN created on a 64-bit system is 64 bit. On a 64-bit system use
C:WINDOWSSYSWOW64odbc32.exe.
o vCenter Server must have a computer name that is 15 characters or fewer. The data source name (DSN) and remote database systems can
have names with more than 15 characters.
o To prepare a SQL Server database to work with vCenter Server, you generally need to create a SQL Server database user with database
operator (DBO) rights.
o If you use SQL Server for vCenter Server, do not use the master database.
o When using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition with vCenter Server, do not name the instance MSSQLSERVER.
o The 9L0-510 vCenter Server performs a silent installation of vCenter Orchestrator. If you install vCenter Server on an IPv6 operating system, the
vCenter Orchestrator module is not supported.
o The vSphere Host Update Utility is for updating and patching ESXi 4.0 hosts and upgrading ESX 3.x/ESXi 3.5 hosts to ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0.
o You can join multiple vCenter Server systems to form a Linked Mode group.
o Linked Mode global data includes:
o Connection information (IP and ports)
o Certificates
o Licensing information
o User roles

The evaluation period is 60 days and begins as soon as you power on the ESX machine, even if you start in license mode initially.
o The installer creates three basic partitions: /boot, vmkcore and VMFS. The service console VMDK file contains swap, and /var/log, by default,
and any other partitions that you specify.
o The media depot is a network-accessible location that contains the ESX installation media. You can use HTTP/ HTTPS, FTP, or NFS 220 701 to access the
depot.
o Scripted installation – you must point to the media depot in the script by including the install command with the nfs or url option.
o Interactive installation – include the askmedia boot option.
o The boot options list appears when you boot the installer and press F2.
o Bootstrap Commands for ESX Installation
Command Description
askmedia Allows you to interactively select the location of the ESX installation media. This option is required if the
image is hosted at an HTTP, FTP, or NFS location.
BOOTIF Accepts the format for the boot network adapter as supplied by PXELINUX.
gateway=<ip address> Sets this network gateway as the default gateway during the install.
ip=<ip address> Specifies a static IP address to be used for downloading the script and the installation media. The IPAPPEND
option is also supported if you PXE boot the installer.
ks=cdrom:/<path> Performs a scripted installation with the script at <path>, which resides on the DVD in the DVD-ROM drive.
ks=file://<path> Performs a scripted installation with the script at <path>, which resides inside the initial ramdisk image.
ks=ftp://<server>/<path>/ Performs a scripted installation with a script located at the given URL.
ks=http://<server>/<path> Performs a scripted installation with a script located at the given URL.
ks=https://<server>/<path> Performs a scripted installation with a script located at the given URL.
ks=nfs://<server>/<path> Performs a scripted installation with the script located at <path> on a given NFS server.
ks=usb Performs a scripted installation with the ks.cfg script in the root directory of the USB flash drive attached to
the host. If multiple flash drives are attached, the installer cycles through each one, mounting and
unmounting them until the file named ks.cfg is found.
ks=UUID:<partition-UUID>:/<path> Performs a scripted installation with a script located on the ext partition with the given UUID.
ksdevice=<device> Same as 220 702 netdevice
nameserver=<ip address> Specifies a domain name server as the nameserver during the install.
netdevice=<device> Tries to use a network adapter <device> when looking for an installation script and installation media. Specify
as a MAC address (for example, 00:50:56:C0:00:01). If not specified and files need to be retrieved over
the network, the installer defaults to the first discovered network adapter. The IPAPPEND option is also
supported if you PXE boot the installer.
netmask=<subnet mask> Specifies subnet mask for the network interface that downloads the installation media.
noapic Flags the kernel to use the XTPIC instead of the APIC.
text Starts the ESX installer in text mode.
url=<url> Looks for the installation media at the specified URL. When you are PXE booting the installer, the url=
command only works with earlier versions of SYSLINUX. The command does not work with
SYSLINUX/PXELINUX version 3.70 and higher.
vlanid=<vlanid> Configures the VLAN for the network card.
o PXE Boot the ESX Installer:
1. Install TFTP server software that supports PXE booting.
2. Put menu.c32 file in an accessible place
3. Install PXELINUX.
4. Configure the DHCP server.
5. Create the kernel image and ramdisk directory by copying the vmlinuz and initrd.img files from the /isolinux directory on the ESX
installation DVD to a supported location.
6. Create the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory on your TFTP server.
7. Create a PXE configuration file. PXE configuration file in /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
o In an interactive installation, omit the ks= option.
o ESX 3.x supported a hybrid installation. You could supply an incomplete ESX installation script, and the installer prompts you for the missing
parts. ESX 4.0 does not support this.
o Install ESX interactively or by using a script. For interactive installation, you can use graphical mode or text mode.
o The installer erases all content on the selected storage device.
o Installing ESX on a USB device is not supported.
o VMFS2 volumes are not recognized by the ESX 4.0 installer.
o The installation 220 701 log is /var/log/esx_install.log.
o The installation script can reside in one of the following locations:
o Default installation script
o FTP
o HTTP/HTTPS
o NFS
o USB flash drive
o Local disk
o The installer creates a /root/ks.cfg script, which reflects the choices you made in the interactive installation.
o Installation media contains the following default installation scripts:

ESX/ESXi uses at least 50MB of system memory for the VMkernel. This is not configurable. It depends on the number and type of PCI devices.
An ESXi host uses additional system memory for management agents.
o The service console typically uses 272MB.
o Memory activity is monitored to estimate the working set sizes for a default period of 60 seconds.
o ESX/ESXi charges more for idle memory than for memory that is in use. This is done to help prevent virtual machines from hoarding idle
memory.
o Hosts 640 802 Dumps can reclaim memory from virtual machines using:
o Memory balloon driver (vmmemctl) - collaborates with the server to reclaim pages that are considered least valuable by the guest
operating system. Closely matches the behavior of a native system under similar memory constraints. Causes the guest to use its own
native memory management algorithms. You must configure the guest operating system with sufficient swap space.
o Swap Files - hosts use swapping to forcibly reclaim memory from a virtual machine when the vmmemctl driver is not available or is not
responsive. You must reserve swap space for any unreserved virtual machine memory (the difference between the reservation and the
configured memory size) on per-virtual machine swap files.
o If you are overcommitting memory, to support the intra-guest swapping induced by ballooning, ensure that your guest operating systems also
have sufficient swap space. This guest-level swap space must be greater than or equal to the difference between the virtual machine’s
configured memory size and its Reservation.
o Many workloads present opportunities for sharing memory across virtual machines.
o To determine the effectiveness of memory sharing use resxtop or esxtop to observe the actual savings. The PSHARE field of the interactive
mode in the Memory page.
o You measure guest physical memory using the Memory Granted metric (for a virtual machine) or Memory Shared (for an ESX/ESXi host). To
measure machine memory, however, use Memory Consumed (for a virtual machine) or Memory Shared Common (for an ESX/ESXi host).
o The VMkernel maps guest physical memory to machine memory.
o Multiple regions of guest physical memory might be mapped to the same region of machine memory (in the case of memory sharing) or
specific regions of guest physical memory might not be mapped to machine memory (when the VMkernel swaps out or balloons guest physical
memory)
o Resource Pool Hierarchy can have Parents, Children, and Siblings.
o Resource Pool Admission Control - Before you power on a virtual machine or create a resource pool, check the CPU Unreserved and Memory
Unreserved fields in the resource pool’s Resource Allocation tab to determine whether sufficient resources are available.
o A group power on will power on multiple virtual machines at the same time.
o VMotion does not support raw disks or migration of applications clustered using Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS).
o Other VMware products 640-802 or features, such as VMware vApp and VMware Fault Tolerance, might override the automation levels of virtual
machines in a DRS cluster.
o An affinity rule specifies that two or more virtual machines be placed on the same host. An anti-affinity DRS rule is limited to two virtual
machines,
o If two rules conflict, the older one will take precedence, and the newer rule is disabled.
o Disabled rules are ignored. DRS gives higher precedence to preventing violations of anti-affinity rules than violations of affinity rules.
o When a host machine is placed in standby mode, it is powered off.
o Hosts are placed in standby mode by the VMware DPM feature
o A cluster becomes overcommitted (yellow) when the cluster does not have the capacity to support all resources reserved by the child resource
pools. Typically this happens when cluster capacity is suddenly reduced.
o A cluster enabled for DRS becomes invalid (red) when the tree is no longer internally consistent, that is, resource constraints are not observed.
o VMware DPM can use one of three power management protocols
o IPMI - Intelligent Platform Management Interface
o iLO - Hewlett-Packard Integrated Lights-Out
o WOL - Wake-On-LAN
o If a host supports multiple protocols, they are used in the following order: IPMI, iLO, WOL.
o The VMotion NIC on each host must support WOL to use that protocol.
o The DRS threshold and the VMware DPM threshold are essentially independent. You can differentiate the aggressiveness of the migration and
host-power-state recommendations.
o Verify that DPM is functioning properly by viewing each host’s Last Time Exited Standby information.
o The most serious potential error you face when using VMware DPM is the failure of a host to exit standby mode when its capacity is needed
by the DRS cluster. Use the preconfigured Exit Standby Error alarm for this error.
o DRS Recommendations have 5 levels (1-5). Priority 1, the highest, indicates a mandatory move because of a host entering maintenance or
standby mode or DRS rule violations. Other priority ratings denote how much the recommendation would improve the cluster’s performance;
o Prior to 640 802 braindumps ESX/ESXi 4.0, recommendations received a star rating (1 to 5 stars) instead of a priority level.
o Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems are advanced server platforms with more than one system bus.
o Some virtual machines are not managed by the ESX/ESXi NUMA scheduler: if you manually set the processor affinity for a virtual machine, or
virtual machines that have more virtual processors than the number of physical processor cores available on a single hardware node.
o When a virtual machine is powered on, ESX/ESXi assigns it a home node. This is initially assigned to home nodes in a round robin fashion.

On ESXi, it is not possible to rescan a single storage adapter.
o You can modify the Disk.MaxLUN parameter to improve LUN discovery speed.
o You cannot discover LUNs with a LUN ID number that is greater than 255.
o You can disable the default sparse LUN support to decrease the time ESX/ESXi needs to scan for LUNs.
o The sparse LUN support enables the VMkernel to perform uninterrupted LUN scanning when a storage system presents LUNs vcp-410 with
nonsequential LUN numbering.
o NPIV enables a single FC HBA port to register several unique WWNs with the fabric, each of which can be assigned to an individual virtual
machine.
o The virtual machine’s configuration file (.vmx) is updated to include a WWN pair (consisting of a World Wide Port Name and a World Wide
Node Name).
o If NPIV is enabled, four WWN pairs (WWPN & WWNN) are specified for each virtual machine at creation time. All physical paths must be
zoned to the virtual machine.
o NPIV can only be used for virtual machines with RDM disks. Physical HBAs, must have access to all LUNs that are to be accessed by virtual
machines running on that host.
o By default, the host performs a periodic path evaluation every 5 minutes causing any unclaimed paths to be claimed by the appropriate MPP.
o Make sure read/write caching is enabled.
o Dynamic load balancing is not currently supported with ESX/ESXi.
o Path thrashing only occurs on active-passive arrays
Appendix A – Multipathing Checklist
Appendix B – Managing Storage Paths and Multipathing Plugins
o Claim rules indicate which multipathing plugin, the NMP (Native MP) or any third-party MPP, manages a given physical path.
o List claim rules esxcli corestorage claimrule list
o To list all multipathing modules: vicfg-mpath --server <server> --list-plugins
o List all VMware SATPs: esxcli nmp satp list
o List all storage devices: esxcli nmp device list
iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide
o There is no mention of requiring a Service Console connection for iSCSI anymore.
o Virtual SCSI controllers - BusLogic Parallel, LSI Logic Parallel, LSI Logic SAS, and VMware Paravirtual.
o iSCSI Name identifies a particular iSCSI element. The iSCSI name can use either IQN or EUI format.
o IQN (iSCSI qualified name) - can be up to 255 characters long and has the following format: iqn.yyyy-mm.naming-authority:unique_name
o EUI (extended unique identifier) - takes the form eui.<16 hex digits>
o iSCSI aliases - not unique, and are intended to be just a friendly name to associate with the node.
o You must enable your software iSCSI initiator so that ESX can use it to access iSCSI storage.
o Dynamic vmware vcp 410 Discovery - Also known as Send Targets discovery responds by supplying a list of available targets to the initiator. The names and IP
addresses of these targets appear on the Static Discovery tab. If you remove a static target added by dynamic discovery, the target might be
returned to the list the next time a rescan happens, the HBA is reset, or the host is rebooted.
o Static Discovery - The initiator does not have to perform any discovery.
o Dynamic discovery obtains a list of accessible targets from the iSCSI storage system, while static discovery can only try to access one particular
target by target name.
o You cannot change the IP address, DNS name, or port number of an existing Send Targets server. To make changes, delete the existing server
and add a new one.
o To protect the integrity of iSCSI headers and data, the iSCSI protocol defines error correction methods known as header digests and data
digests. Both parameters are disabled by default, but you can enable them.
o Check the end-to-end, noncryptographic data integrity beyond the integrity checks that other networking layers provide.
o Enabling header and data digests does require additional processing for both the initiator and the target. Intel Nehalem processors offload
the iSCSI digest calculations.
o Use the esxcli command to connect the VMkernel ports to the software iSCSI initiator.
o Jumbo Frames up to 9kB (9000 Bytes) are supported.
o You cannot change the IP address, DNS name, iSCSI target name, or port number of an existing target. To make changes, remove the existing
target and add a new one.
o iSCSI requires that all devices on the network implement Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP), which verifies the legitimacy
of initiators that access targets on the network. (EDIT - I don’t think its “required”)
o ESX/ESXi supports one-way CHAP for both hardware and software iSCSI, and mutual CHAP vmware vcp 410 for software iSCSI only.
o For software iSCSI only, you can set one-way CHAP and mutual CHAP for each initiator or at the target level.
o Hardware iSCSI supports CHAP only at the initiator level.
o For software iSCSI, the CHAP name should not exceed 511 and the CHAP secret 255 alphanumeric characters.
o For hardware iSCSI, the CHAP name should not exceed 255 and the CHAP secret 100 alphanumeric characters.
o Boot from a SAN - ensure that the LUN is presented to the ESX system as LUN 0. The host can also boot from LUN 255.

Set up a separate VLAN or virtual switch for vMotion and network attached storage.
o The iSCSI initiator relies on being able to get MAC address changes from certain types of storage. If you are using ESX iSCSI and have iSCSI
storage, set the MAC Address Changes option to Accept.
o A legitimate need for more than one adapter to have the same MAC Passed VCP410 address, is if you are using Microsoft Network Load Balancing in unicast
mode. When NLB is used in the standard multicast mode, adapters do not share MAC addresses.
o ESX uses the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) structure for authentication. The PAM configuration in /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd, ESX
uses /etc/passwd authentication, but you can configure ESX to use another distributed authentication mechanism.
o CIM transactions also use ticket-based authentication in connecting with the vmware-hostd process.
o Management functions with username/password > vmware-hostd > Service Console
o VM console with ticket > vmkauthd > vm in VMkernel
o vicfg commands do not perform an access check.
o The vpxuser is used for vCenter Server permissions.
o The root user and vpxuser permissions are the only users not assigned the No Access role by default.
o ESX supports SSL v3 and TLS v1.
o All network traffic is encrypted as long as:
o Did not change the Web proxy service to allow unencrypted traffic for the port.
o Service console firewall is configured for medium or high security.
o The default location for your certificate is /etc/vmware/ssl/ on the ESX host. The certificate consists of two files: the certificate itself (rui.crt)
and the private-key file (rui.key).
o The ESX host generates certificates the first time the system is started.
o Each time you restart the vmware-hostd process, the mgmt-vmware script searches for existing certificate files (rui.crt and rui.key). If it cannot
find them, it generates new certificate files.
o SSL timeout settings are set in /etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml.
o Do not set up certificates using passphrases.
o For certificates in a location other than the default location, set the location in /etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml.
o If you are performing activities that require root privileges, log in to the service console as a recognized user and acquire root privileges
through the sudo Passed VCP 4 command, which provides enhanced security compared to the su command.
o The service console firewall is configured to block all incoming and outgoing traffic, except for ports 22, 123, 427, 443, 902, 5989, 5988, pings
(ICMP) and communication with DHCP and DNS (UDP only) clients.
o Medium security - All incoming traffic is blocked, except on the default ports and any ports you specifically open. Outgoing traffic is not
blocked.
o Low security - There are no blocks on either incoming or outgoing traffic. This setting is equivalent to removing the firewall.
o Password aging restrictions are enabled for user logins by default.
o Maximum days - By default, passwords are set to never expire.
o Minimum days - The default is 0, meaning that the users can change their passwords any time.
o Warning time - The default is seven days.
o To change this for hosts use esxcfg-auth. Change for users use the command chage.
o By default, ESX uses the pam_cracklib.so plug-in. There is no restrictions on the root password, but the defaults for non-root users is:
o minimum password length is nine
o password length algorithm allows shorter passwords if the user enters a mix of character classes. M – CC = E where the Character Classes
are upper, lower, digits and other.
o retries is set to three
o The pam_passwdqc.so provides a greater number of options for fine-tuning password strength and performs password strength tests for all
users, including the root user.
o setuid allows an application to temporarily change the permissions of the user running the application.
o setgid changes the permissions of the group running the application.
o Default setuid applications: crontab, pam_timestamp_check, passwd, ping, pwdb_chkpwd, ssh-keysign, su, sudo, unix_chkpwd, vcp 410 vmkload_app,
vmware-authd, vmware-vmx. Default setgid Applications: wall, lockfile.
o Virtual Machine Recommendations:
o Install Antivirus Software
o Disable Copy and Paste Operations Between the Guest Operating System and Remote Console
o Removing Unnecessary Hardware Devices
o Limiting Guest Operating System Writes to Host Memory
o Configuring Logging Levels for the Guest Operating System
o Host profiles eliminates per-host, configuration and maintain configuration consistency and correctness across the datacenter.
o Only supported for VMware vSphere 4.0 hosts.
o Host Profiles are only available when the appropriate licensing is in place.
o You can export a profile to a file that is in the VMware profile format (.vpf).

Key contents of the metadata in the mapping file include the location of the mapped device (name resolution), the locking state of the
mapped device, permissions, and so on.
o You cannot perform vMotion or Storage vMotion between datastores when NPIV is enabled.
o VMware protects the service console with a firewall. It also mitigates risks using other VCP-410 questions methods:
o Only services essential to managing its functions.
o By default, installed with a high-security setting. All outbound ports are closed.
o By default, all ports not specifically required for management access to the service console are closed.
o By default, weak ciphers are disabled and all communications from clients are secured by SSL. Default certificates created on ESX use
SHA-1 with RSA encryption as the signature algorithm.
o The Tomcat Web service, has been modified to run only those functions required.
o VMware monitors all security alerts (for the RHEL5 distribution and 3rd party software).
o Insecure services such as FTP and Telnet are not installed.
o The number of applications that use a setuid or setgid flag is minimized.
o ESX can automate whether services start based on the status of firewall ports, but this only applies to service settings configured through the
vSphere Client or applications created with the vSphere Web services SDK. Doesn’t apply to changes made with the esxcfg-firewall utility or
VCP-410 dumps configuration files in /etc/init.d/.
Port Purpose Interface Traffic type
22 SSH Server Service Console Incoming TCP
80 HTTP access and WS-Management Service Console Incoming TCP
123 NTP Client Service Console Outgoing UDP
427 The CIM client SLPv2 to find CIM servers. Service Console Incoming and
outgoing UDP
443 HTTPS access - vmware-hostd
vCenter Server access to ESX hosts
Client access to vCenter Server and ESX hosts
WS-Management
Client access to vSphere Update Manager
Converter access to vCenter Server
Web Access to vCenter Server and ESX hosts
Service Console Incoming TCP
902 Host access to other hosts for migration and provisioning
Authentication traffic for ESX (xinetd/vmware-authd)
Client access to virtual machine consoles (UDP) Status update (heartbeat)
connection from ESX to vCenter Server
Service Console Incoming TCP,
outgoing UDP
903 Remote console traffic from VI client & Web Access (xinetd/vmware-authd-mks) Service Console Incoming TCP
2049 Transactions from NFS storage devices VMkernel Incoming and
outgoing TCP
2050-2250 Between ESX hosts for HA and EMC Autostart Manager Service Console Outgoing TCP,
incoming and
outgoing UDP
3260 Transactions to iSCSI storage devices VMkernel &
Service Console
Outgoing UDP
5900-5964 RFB protocol, which is used by management tools such as VNC Service Console Incoming and
outgoing TCP
5989 CIM XML Passed VCP-410 transactions over HTTPS Service Console Incoming and
outgoing TCP
8000 VMotion requests VMkernel Incoming and
outgoing TCP
8042-8045 Between ESX hosts for HA and EMC Autostart Manager Service Console Outgoing TCP,
incoming and
outgoing UDP
8100, 8200 Between ESX hosts for Fault Tolerance Service Console Outgoing TCP,
incoming and
outgoing UDP
PLUS installed management agents and supported services such as NFS.
o Create a separate VLAN for communication with the service console.
o Configure network access for connections with the service console through a single virtual switch and one or more uplink ports.

You cannot use IDE/ATA drives to store virtual machines.
o Use local SATA storage, internal and external, in unshared mode only.
o Some SAS storage systems can offer shared access
o You can have up to 256 VMFS datastores per system, with a minimum volume size of 1.2GB.
o Grow the existing datastore extent if the storage device where your datastore resides has free space. You can grow the extent up to 2 TB.
o You can connect up to 32 hosts to a single VMFS volume. (EDIT: Maximums document says 64)
o Perform a rescan VCP-410 exam each time you:
o Create new LUNs on a SAN.
o Change the path masking on a host.
o Reconnect a cable.
o Make a change to a host in a cluster.
o Do not rescan when a path is unavailable.
o To rescan adapters on all hosts managed by vCenter by right-clicking a datacenter, cluster, or folder and selecting Rescan for Datastores.
o ESX does not support the delegate user functionality that enables access to NFS volumes using non-root credentials
o Disk format on a NAS device is dictated by the NFS server, typically a thin format that requires on-demand space allocation.
o When your host accesses a virtual machine disk file on an NFS-based datastore, a .lck-XXX lock file is generated to prevent other hosts from
accessing this file.
o If the underlying NFS volume, is read-only, make sure that the volume is exported as a read-only share by the NFS server, or configure it as a
read-only on the ESX host.
o A diagnostic partition cannot be located on an iSCSI LUN accessed through a software iSCSI initiator.
o You can query and scan the host’s diagnostic partition using the vicfg-dumppart -l command
o You can group datastores into folders.
o You can unmount:
o NFS datastores
o VMFS datastore copies mounted without resignaturing
o You can have up to 32 extents.
o You can grow an extent in an existing VMFS datastore. Only extents with free space immediately after them are expandable.
o If a shared datastore has powered on virtual machines and becomes 100% full, you can increase the datastore's capacity only from the host,
with which the powered on virtual machines are registered.
o You can mount a VMFS datastore only if it does not collide with an already mounted VMFS datastore that has the same UUID (signature).
o When resignaturing a VMFS copy, VCP-410 exam questions ESX assigns a new UUID and a new label to the copy, and mounts the copy as a datastore distinct from the
original.
o The default format of the new label assigned to the datastore is snap-<snapID>-<oldLabel>, where <snapID> is an integer and <oldLabel> is the
label of the original datastore.
o Datastore resignaturing is irreversible.
o A spanned datastore can be resignatured only if all its extents are online.
o Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) is an open modular framework that coordinates the simultaneous operation of multiple multipathing
plugins (MPPs). The VMkernel multipathing plugin that ESX provides by default is the VMware Native Multipathing Plugin (NMP). Two types of
NMP subplugins, Storage Array Type Plugins (SATPs), and Path Selection Plugins (PSPs).
o 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.
o ESX offers an SATP for every type of array that VMware supports.
o By default, the VMware NMP supports the following PSPs:
o Most Recently Used (MRU)
o Fixed - with active-passive arrays that have a Fixed path policy, path thrashing might be a problem.
o Round Robin (RR) - Uses a path selection algorithm that rotates through all available paths enabling load balancing across the paths.
o Claim rules defined in the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file, the host determines which multipathing plugin (MPP) should claim the paths.
o By default, the host performs a periodic path evaluation every 5 minutes.
o Active multiple working paths currently used for transferring data are marked as VCP-410 study guide Active (I/O). In ESX 3.5 or earlier, the term active means the
only path that the host is using to issue I/O to a LUN.
o Standby path is operational and can be used for I/O if active paths fail.
o If you created a virtual disk in the thin format, you can later inflate it to its full size.
o RDM offers several benefits. User-Friendly Persistent Names, Dynamic Name Resolution, Distributed File Locking, File Permissions, File System
Operations, Snapshots, vMotion, SAN Management Agents and N-Port ID Virtualization(NPIV).
o Certain limitations exist when you use RDMs:
o Not available for block devices or certain RAID devices.
o Available with VMFS-2 and VMFS-3 volumes only.
o No snapshots in physical compatibility mode.
o No partition mapping. It requires a whole LUN.

MAC Address Changes - the guest OS changes the MAC address of the adapter to anything other than what is in the .vmx
o Forged Transmits - Outbound frames with a source MAC address that is different from the one set on the adapter are dropped.
o Traffic shaping
o Traffic shaping policy is defined by three characteristics: average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size.
o ESX shapes outbound network traffic on vSwitches and both inbound and outbound traffic on a vNetwork Distributed Switch.
o Peak bandwidth VCP-410 dumps cannot be less than the specified average bandwidth.
o NIC Teaming (Load balancing and failover)
o Load Balancing
1. Route based on the originating port ID — Choose an uplink based on the virtual port where the traffic entered the virtual
switch.
2. Route based on ip hash — Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source and destination IP addresses of each packet.
3. Route based on source MAC hash — Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet.
4. Use explicit failover order — Always use the highest order uplink from the list of Active adapters which passes failover
detection criteria.
o IP-based teaming requires that the physical switch be configured with etherchannel. For all other options, etherchannel should
be disabled.
o Incoming traffic is controlled by the load balancing policy on the physical switch
o Network failover detection
o Link Status only
o Beacon probing - Do not use beacon probing with IP-hash load balancing.
o Notify Switches - a notification is sent out over the network to update the lookup tables on physical switches. In almost all cases, this
process is desirable for the lowest latency of failover occurrences and migrations with VMotion. Do not use this option when the
virtual machines using the port group are using Microsoft Network Load Balancing in unicast mode.
o Failback - determines how a physical adapter is returned to active duty after recovering from a failure. If failback is set to Yes
(default), the adapter is returned to active duty immediately upon recovery.
o Failover Order
1. Active Uplinks
2. Standby Uplinks
3. Unused Uplinks
o When using IP-hash load balancing, do not configure standby uplinks.
o VLAN - The VLAN policy allows virtual networks to join physical VCP-410 VLANs - vNetwork Distributed Switch only (dvPorts).
o Port blocking policies - vNetwork Distributed Switch only (dvPorts).
o VMware uses the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) 00:50:56 for manually generated addresses. You must set them in a virtual
machine’s configuration file: ethernet<number>.addressType="static"
o Jumbo frames must be enabled at the host level using the command-line interface to configure the MTU size for each vSwitch.
o TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) is enabled on the VMkernel interface by default, but must be enabled at the virtual machine level.
o To enable TSO at the virtual machine level, you must replace the existing vmxnet or flexible virtual network adapters with enhanced vmxnet
virtual network adapters. This might result in a change in the MAC address of the virtual network adapter.
o To check whether TSO is enabled on a particular VMkernel networking interface use the esxcfg-vmknic -l command. The list shows
each TSO-enabled VMkernel interface with TSO MSS set to 65535.
o If TSO is not enabled for a particular VMkernel interface, the only way to enable it is to delete the VMkernel interface and recreate the
interface.
o Jumbo frames up to 9kB (9000 bytes) are supported.
o Use the vicfg-vswitch -m <MTU> <vSwitch> command to set the MTU size for the vSwitch.
o Enabling jumbo frame support on a virtual machine requires an enhanced vmxnet adapter for that virtual machine.
o NetQueue in ESX takes advantage of the capability of some network adapters to deliver network traffic to the system in multiple receive
queues that can be processed VCP-410 braindump separately. This allows processing to be scaled to multiple CPUs, improving receive-side networking
performance.
o NetQueue is enabled by default.
o ESX supports a direct PCI device connection for virtual machines running on Intel Nehalem platforms. Each virtual machine can connect to up
to 2 passthrough devices.
o The following features are unavailable for virtual machines configured with VMDirectPath:
o VMotion
o Hot adding and removing of virtual devices
o Suspend and resume
o Record and replay
o Fault tolerance
o High availability
o DRS (limited availability; the virtual machine can be part of a cluster, but cannot migrate across hosts)
o Software-initiated iSCSI is not available over 10GigE network adapters in ESX.

By default, statistics are stored in the vCenter Server database for one year. You can increase this to three years.
o You cannot view datastore metrics in the advanced charts. They are only available in the overview charts.
o CPU Performance Enhancement Advice
1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on every VM on the host.
2. Compare the CPU VCP-410 exam questions usage value of a VM with the CPU usage of other VMs 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 VMs on the host.
3. Determine whether the high ready time for the VM resulted from its CPU usage time reaching the CPU limit setting. If so, increase the
CPU limit on the VM.
4. Increase the CPU shares to give the VM 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 VMs to guarantee
that they receive the required CPU cycles.
5. Increase the amount of memory allocated to the VM. This decreases disk and or network activity for applications that cache. This might
lower disk I/O and reduce the need for the ESX/ESXi host to virtualize the hardware. Virtual machines with smaller resource allocations
generally accumulate more CPU ready time.
6. Reduce the number of virtual CPUs on a VM to only the number required to execute the workload. For example, a single-threaded
application on a four-way VM 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.
7. 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 VMs onto the new host.
8. Upgrade the physical CPUs or cores on the host if necessary.
9. Use the newest version of ESX/ESXi, and enable CPU-saving features such as TCP Segmentation Offload, large memory pages, and jumbo
frames.
o Memory Performance Enhancement Advice
1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each VM. The balloon driver is installed with VMware Tools and is critical to performance.
2. Verify that the balloon driver is enabled. The VMkernel regularly reclaims unused VM memory by ballooning and swapping. Generally,
this does not impact VM performance.
3. VCP-410 study guide Reduce the memory space on the VM, and correct the cache size if it is too large. This frees up memory for other VMs.
4. If the memory reservation of the VM is set to a value much higher than its active memory, decrease the reservation setting so that the
VMkernel can reclaim the idle memory for other VMs on the host.
5. Migrate one or more VMs to a host in a DRS cluster.
6. Add physical memory to the host.
o Disk I/O Performance Enhancement Advice
1. Increase the VM memory. This should allow for more operating system caching, which can reduce I/O activity. Note that this may require
you to also increase the host memory. Increasing memory might reduce the need to store data because databases can utilize system
memory to cache data and avoid disk access. To verify that VMs have adequate memory, check swap statistics in the guest operating
system. Increase the guest memory, but not to an extent that leads to excessive host memory swapping. Install VMware Tools so that
memory ballooning can occur.
2. Defragment the file systems on all guests.
3. Disable antivirus on-demand scans on the VMDK and VMEM (backup of the VM’s paging file) files.
4. Use the vendor's array tools to determine the array performance statistics. When too many servers simultaneously access common
elements on an array, the disks might have trouble keeping up. Consider array-side improvements to increase throughput.
5. Use Storage VMotion to migrate I/O-intensive VMs across multiple ESX/ESXi hosts.
6. Balance the disk load across all physical resources available. Spread heavily used storage across LUNs that are accessed by different
adapters. Use separate queues for each adapter to improve disk efficiency.
7. Configure the HBAs and RAID controllers for optimal use. Verify that the queue depths and cache settings on the RAID controllers are
adequate. If not, increase the number of outstanding disk requests for the VM by adjusting the Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding
parameter. For more information, see the Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide.
8. For resource-intensive VMs, separate the VM's physical disk drive from the drive with the system page file. This alleviates disk spindle
contention during VCP-410 questions periods of high use.
9. On systems with sizable RAM, disable memory trimming by adding the line MemTrimRate=0 to the VM's .VMX file.
10. If the combined disk I/O is higher than a single HBA capacity, use multipathing or multiple links.
11. For ESXi hosts, create virtual disks as preallocated. When you create a virtual disk for a guest operating system, select Allocate all disk
space now. The performance degradation associated with reassigning additional disk space does not occur, and the disk is less likely to
become fragmented.
12. Use the most current ESX/ESXi host hardware.
o Networking Performance Enhancement Advice
1. Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each VM.
2. If possible, use vmxnet3 NIC drivers, which are available with VMware Tools. They are optimized for high performance.
3. If VMs running on the same ESX/ESXi host communicate with each other, connect them to the same vSwitch to avoid the cost of
transferring packets over the physical network.

vSphere supports a maximum of eight simultaneous VMotion, cloning, deployment, or Storage VMotion accesses to a single VMFS3
datastore, and a maximum of four simultaneous VMotion, cloning, deployment, or Storage VMotion accesses to a single NFS or VMFS2
datastore. A migration with VMotion involves one access to the datastore. A migration with Storage VCP-410 VMotion involves one access to the
source datastore and one access to the destination datastore
o Disks are converted from thin to thick format or thick to thin format only when they are copied from one datastore to another. If you choose
to leave a disk in its original location, the disk format is not converted.
o Thin or thick provisioned – not available for RDMs in physical compatibility mode. If you select this option for a virtual compatibility mode
RDM, the RDM is converted to a virtual disk. RDMs converted to virtual disks cannot be converted back to RDMs.
o You can run the storage vmotion command in either interactive or noninteractive mode.
o Interactive mode, type svmotion --interactive.
o Noninteractive mode: svmotion [Standard CLI options] --datacenter=<datacenter name> --vm ‘<VM config datastore path>:<new
datastore>’ [--disks ‘<virtual disk datastore path>:<new datastore>, <virtual disk datastore path>:<new datastore>]’
o A snapshot captures the entire state of the VM at the time you take the snapshot. This includes:
o Memory state – The contents of the VM’s memory.
o Settings state – The VM settings.
o Disk state – The state of all the VM’s virtual disks.
o Snapshots of raw disks, RDM physical mode disks, and independent disks are not supported.
o Change Disk Mode to independent to Exclude Virtual Disks from Snapshots
o Persistent – Disks in persistent mode behave like conventional disks on your physical computer. All data written to a disk in persistent mode
are written permanently to the disk.
o Nonpersistent – Changes are discarded when you power off or reset the VM. Nonpersistent mode enables you to restart the VM with a virtual
disk in the same state every time. Changes to the disk are actually written to and read from a redo log file that is deleted when you power off
or reset.
o Snapshots:
o Delete – commits the snapshot data to the parent and removes the selected snapshot.
o Delete All – commits all the immediate snapshots before the You are here current state to the base disk and removesall existing
snapshots for that VCP-410 braindump VM.
o Revert to Snapshot – a shortcut to the parent snapshot of “You are here”.
o If you use Active Directory groups for permissions, make sure that they are security groups and not distribution groups.
o Users who are currently logged in and are removed from the domain retain their vSphere permissions only until the next validation period (the
default is every 24 hours).
o A role is a predefined set of privileges. Privileges define basic individual rights required to perform actions and read properties. When you
assign a user or group permissions, you pair the user or group with a role and associate that pairing with an inventory object.
o Default roles:
o System roles – System roles are permanent. You cannot edit the privileges associated with these roles.
o Sample roles – VMware provides sample roles for convenience as guidelines and suggestions. You can modify or remove these roles.
o You can also create completely new roles.
o All roles permit the user to schedule tasks by default. Users can schedule only tasks they have permission to perform at the time the tasks are
created.
o Default roles:
Role Role Type Description of User Capabilities
No Access system Cannot view or change the assigned object. available in ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server.
Read Only system View the state and details about the object. available on ESX/ESXi and vCenter
Server.
Administrator system All privileges for all objects. VCP-410 exam available in ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server.
Virtual Machine
Power User
sample allow the user to interact with and make hardware changes to VMs, as well as
perform snapshot operations. available only on vCenter Server.
Virtual Machine User sample allow the user to interact with a VM’s console, insert media, and perform power
operations. available only on vCenter Server.
Resource Pool
Administrator
sample allow the user to create child resource pools and modify the configuration of the
children, but not to modify the resource configuration of the pool or cluster on which
the role was granted. Also allows the user to grant permissions to child resource
pools, and assign VMs to the parent or child resource pools. available only on
vCenter Server.
VMware Consolidated
Backup User
sample used by the VMware Consolidated Backup product and should not be modified.
available only on vCenter Server.
Datastore Consumer sample allow the user to consume space on the datastores on which this role is granted.
available only on vCenter Server.
Network Consumer sample allow the user to assign VMs or hosts to networks available only on vCenter Serv