3V0-21.23 VMware vSphere 8.x Advanced Design Questions and Answers

vCPU to pCPU ratio may not exceed 5:1.

This ensures that the virtual CPU (vCPU) allocation is balanced with the physical CPU (pCPU) resources. A ratio that exceeds 5:1 can lead to CPU contention, negatively impacting performance. By maintaining this ratio, the architect ensures that the workloads have sufficient CPU resources for optimal performance.

CPU purchases will favor clock speed and last level cache over cores per socket.

This is an important performance consideration. Choosing CPUs with higher clock speed and larger last-level cache (LLC) ensures that workloads requiring higher single-threaded performance are optimized. This decision favors workloads that benefit from faster CPU processing and larger cache sizes, improving overall performance.

Additional ESXi hosts will be added to the cluster when CPU or memory utilization exceeds 70% for 3 consecutive business days.

This performance-related decision ensures that the environment remains responsive under load. Adding additional hosts when resource utilization exceeds thresholds helps prevent bottlenecks and ensures continued optimal performance by distributing workloads across more physical hosts.

For NIC Teaming, all NICs in the same port group must be in the same layer 2 broadcast domain.

This is a key consideration for NIC teaming. All NICs in a team must be in the same Layer 2 broadcast domain to ensure that traffic is properly routed and that the NIC team can work as expected within the vSphere environment. This is necessary for network redundancy and communication consistency.

To increase availability, the NICs within a NIC team should be from different physical NIC Cards.

To eliminate single points of failure, NICs within the same NIC team should be sourced from different physical NIC cards. This way, if one physical NIC card fails, the other NICs in the team will still be able to handle network traffic, ensuring availability.

NIC Teaming requires a minimum of two physical network connections.

NIC Teaming relies on having at least two physical NICs for redundancy and load balancing. This is a basic requirement to prevent single points of failure in network connectivity. With only one NIC, there would be no fault tolerance.

A business outcome refers to a result or impact that directly contributes to the strategic goals of the organization, typically focusing on long-term objectives or future benefits. In this case, building a strong foundation for future projects, including cloud infrastructures, aligns with the business goal of positioning the organization for future success and scalability. This outcome is about preparing the organization for the future, which is a key business-driven result.

TheMaximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD)is the maximum time that an application or system can be unavailable before it negatively impacts the business. TheMTDis calculated by adding theRecovery Time Objective (RTO)to theWork Recovery Time (WRT). Here’s how it applies to each workload type:

Critical Workloads:

- RTO:1 hour (time to restore the system to a usable state after failure).

- WRT:12 hours (the time to get the application fully back to service).

- MTD = RTO + WRT = 1 hour + 12 hours = 13 hours.

Production Workloads:

- RTO:12 hours (time to restore the system to a usable state after failure).

- WRT:24 hours (time to get the application fully back to service).

- MTD = RTO + WRT = 12 hours + 24 hours = 36 hours.

Development Workloads:

- RTO:24 hours (time to restore the system to a usable state after failure).

- WRT:24 hours (time to get the application fully back to service).

- MTD = RTO + WRT = 24 hours + 24 hours = 48 hours.

The VMware Cloud Foundation consolidated architecture model is designed to support small-scale environments with the ability to scale as needed. In this model, management and workload domains are deployed on the same hardware, which is suitable for environments that start small but may need to expand later. It provides a simplified, cost-effective setup for organizations that want to implement a software-defined data center (SDDC) with flexibility to grow in the future.

Based on VMware vSphere 8.x Advanced documentation, the architect is designing a vSphere-based solution to meet three specific requirements: a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes, a primary and secondary site, and support for orchestration to address application dependencies. The solution must include two VMware technologies that collectively satisfy these requirements.

Requirements Analysis:

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes: The solution must ensure that no more than 15 minutes of data is lost in a disaster, requiring frequent data replication or synchronization between sites.

Primary and secondary site: The solution must support a disaster recovery (DR) architecture with two distinct sites, implying replication or failover capabilities between them.

Orchestration to address application dependencies: The solution must provide automated recovery workflows to manage the startup order and dependencies of multi-tier applications (e.g., ensuring a database starts before an application server).

Evaluation of Options:

A. vSAN stretched cluster:

Why incorrect: A vSAN stretched cluster provides high availability and disaster recovery by synchronously replicating data across two sites, achieving near-zero RPO and RTO. However, it is designed for high-availability scenarios within a single vSphere cluster spanning sites, not traditional DR with orchestration. vSAN stretched clusters do not natively provide orchestration for application dependencies (e.g., automated recovery plans or startup order), which is a key requirement. Additionally, stretched clusters require low-latency, high-bandwidth connections (typically <5ms RTT), which is not guaranteed in the provided information. This option does not fully meet the orchestration requirement.

B. vSphere HA:

Why incorrect: vSphere High Availability (HA) provides automatic VM restarts within a cluster in case of host failures, but it operates within a single site and does not support replication or failover between primary and secondary sites. vSphere HA does not address the 15-minute RPO requirement, as it does not replicate data, nor does itprovide orchestration for application dependencies across sites. This option is unsuitable for a multi-site DR scenario.

C. Site Recovery Manager:

Why correct: VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a disaster recovery solution designed for automated failover and failback between primary and secondary sites. SRM supports orchestration of recovery plans, allowing the architect to define the startup order and dependencies of multi-tier applications (e.g., starting a database before an application server). When paired with vSphere Replication, SRM can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes by orchestrating the failover of replicated VMs. SRM meets the requirements for primary/secondary site support, orchestration for application dependencies, and integration with replication technologies to achieve the required RPO.

This is a technical (formerly non-functional) requirement because it specifies a particular feature (EVC mode for specific processor generations) that the infrastructure must support to ensure compatibility across the vSphere environment. This requirement addresses a technical aspect of how the environment will function but does not directly relate to business functionality.

Use an active-active array for Fibre Channel storage-based VMFS datastores

An active-active array provides redundancy and load balancing by allowing multiple paths to be active at the same time, ensuring better performance and fault tolerance. This supports the requirement for redundancy and no single point of failure by ensuring that storage traffic can be distributed across multiple paths to different storage controllers.

Configure a minimum of two paths to every LUN or datastore

Having multiple paths to every LUN or datastore is essential for ensuring redundancy in the storage path. In case one path fails, the system can continue to function by using the other path, meeting the requirement for tolerance to at least one failure.

Configure a minimum of four paths to every LUN or datastore

Configuring four paths further increases redundancy, ensuring that the storage system can tolerate multiple path failures while still maintaining access to the LUN or datastore. This improves load balancing and provides greater fault tolerance.

Creating a separate vSphere cluster for management workloads ensures that these workloads, which are critical for monitoring, managing, and orchestrating the environment, do not compete for resources with compute workloads. This separation enhances the stability and reliability of management functions, even during periods of high resource utilization by compute workloads.

Enable vSphere with Tanzu on a cluster deployed at a remote location.

VMware Cloud Foundation remote clusters can be deployed to extend the functionality of vSphere with Tanzu to remote locations. This allows for containerized workloads to be managed and orchestrated using the same tools as the primary environment, providing consistent management of Tanzu clusters across multiple sites.

Provide resources for virtual machines at an edge location.

Remote clusters can be deployed at edge locations to provide computing resources for workloads that need to run close to the data source. This use case is particularly useful for applications that require low latency or need to process data locally before sending it to the central cloud infrastructure.

vSphere High Availability Restart Priority set to default at the cluster level

This option ensures that vSphere HA will automatically restart the virtual machines (VMs) on another available host in the cluster if a host fails. Setting the restart priority at the cluster level ensures that the VMs are restarted in an order that helps maintain the availability of critical workloads first, enhancing the overall availability during a host failure.

vSphere NIC Teaming policy: Route based on originating port ID set on the distributed port group

This setting for NIC Teaming ensures that network traffic is distributed effectively across the NICs, improving network availability. In the event of a failure of one physical switch or NIC, the Route based on originating port ID policy ensures that network connectivity for the VMs is maintained via the remaining NICs, enhancing network resilience.

vSphere Round Robin storage multi-pathing policy set on each ESXi host

Setting the Round Robin storage multi-pathing policy helps distribute I/O across multiple paths to the storage system, ensuring that VM storage remains highly available. If one path fails, traffic is automatically rerouted to other available paths, ensuring minimal disruption to VM storage and improving overall availability in the event of storage path failures.

Based on VMware vSphere 8.x Advanced documentation and VMware Validated Solutions (VVS) resources, the VMware Validated Solutions are pre-defined, tested, and proven architectures designed to simplify deployment and operation of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and related technologies. The key benefits include:

C: VVS provides best practice design guidance, offering standardized architectures and configurations that align with VMware's recommended practices to ensure optimal performance and reliability.

E: VVS enables the deployment of technically validated implementations on VMware Cloud Foundation, ensuring that solutions are pre-tested and certified to work seamlessly within the VCF ecosystem, reducing deployment risks.

This option aligns with the requirements for growth, scalability, and updating data protection operations. Using vSAN (Virtual SAN) Ready Nodes provides a hyper-converged infrastructure that combines storage and compute resources into a single platform, making it easy to scale both compute and storage without increasing the data center footprint. It also eliminates the need for traditional external storage arrays and allows for better data protection capabilities compared to the agent-based approach.

The customer's requirement for making it easy to identify and apply patches or updates to ESXi hosts, including pre-staging the files, is focused on simplifying the management of the vSphere environment. This is a key aspect of manageability, which refers to the ease with which IT administrators can handle tasks like patching, updates, and configuration management in a consistent and efficient manner.

Network I/O Control (NIOC) is a key feature available with distributed virtual switches (vDS) that allows administrators to prioritize and allocate bandwidth to specific network traffic types. It ensures that business-critical applications receive the necessary bandwidth and maintain a consistent quality of service (QoS). This solution meets the requirement to ensure optimal network bandwidth allocation and service consistency.

Strict Lockdown Mode is the correct choice because it restricts all access to the ESXi host directly, ensuring that configuration can only be performed through VMware vCenter. This is in line with the requirement that configuration can only be done via vCenter.

Strict Lockdown Mode disables the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and SSH services, which aligns with the customer's requirement to have these services disabled for security purposes.

Virtual Machine Encryption

To ensure that the application’s confidential data is protected, Virtual Machine Encryption should be applied. This will ensure that even if someone gains access to the storage layer or the underlying infrastructure, the data in the virtual machine is encrypted and cannot be accessed outside of the VM, as required by the security and compliance requirements.

The vSphere Native Key Provider

The vSphere Native Key Provider can be used to manage encryption keys within the vSphere environment. Since no budget is available for additional infrastructure components or software, leveraging vSphere's native capabilities for key management ensures that encryption is securely handled without introducing external dependencies. This also aligns with the requirement to not introduce additional infrastructure.

External Key Management Service (KMS) provider

While the vSphere Native Key Provider can manage keys within the environment, if there is a requirement for a more secure or compliant key management solution, an External Key Management Service (KMS) may be used. The KMS provider allows for centralized management of encryption keys, ensuring that the keys are securely stored and controlled according to compliance standards (e.g., FIPS 140-2). Although the Native Key Provider may suffice, this option ensures that key management adheres to stricter compliance needs, especially for confidential data.

The requirement specifies that the solution must use shared storage, which refers to a storage solution that can be accessed by multiple ESXi hosts simultaneously. NFS (Network File System) is a widely used method for providing shared storage in a vSphere environment. By including the NFS mount point and the IP address of the NFS server, the architect can specify how the shared storage will be configured and accessed by the ESXi hosts, meeting the requirement for shared storage.

Data Processing Units (DPUs) are specialized hardware accelerators designed to offload networking and security processing from the CPU, thereby reducing CPU overhead and improving performance, especially in scenarios involving heavy network traffic. DPUs help optimize the time it takes for applications to send and receive large amounts of data, addressing the concern about latency in data transmission.

The vSphere Distributed Services Engine integrates with DPUs to accelerate workloads by offloading network functions and reducing the strain on the CPU. This is particularly beneficial for applications that are sensitive to both CPU availability and network latency.

Separate clusters in DC1 and DC2 provide logical isolation between the two data centers. This means that an accidental change or misconfiguration in one cluster (e.g., DC1) will not affect the other cluster (e.g., DC2). This isolation meets the customer's requirement to limit the impact radius of accidental changes by administrators. By having separate clusters, the risk of cross-site or cross-cluster disruptions is minimized, ensuring better fault tolerance and administrative control.

To meet the customer requirements, we need to address the two specific scenarios:

Workloads must be automatically relocated to other hosts in the event that a host hardware is marked as degraded:

This requirement can be fulfilled by Proactive HA. Proactive HA is a feature of vSphere HA that works in conjunction with hardware health monitoring tools, such as the vendor’s plugin for vCenter. When the vendor's monitoring tool marks a host as degraded (due to hardware issues), Proactive HA can automatically trigger the migration of workloads to other hosts, based on the Automation Level configuration.

Workloads must be automatically restarted on other hosts in the event of a host failure:

This can be managed using vSphere HA with the setting to restart VMs when a host fails. This ensures that in the event of a host failure, workloads are automatically restarted on available hosts in the cluster.

By enabling Proactive HA with an Automation Level of Automated, the architect ensures that degraded hosts are automatically handled (through workload migration) without manual intervention.

The storage may not have capacity to accommodate 20% year-over-year virtual machine growth.

This is a risk because, while the assumption is that the storage hardware has sufficient capacity, there is a possibility that the hardware may not be able to support future growth, especially if the customer's workload grows faster than expected. Documenting this risk ensures that the design considers potential capacity constraints.

The customer may not have an existing licensing subscription that covers features the architect intends to use.

This is a risk because although the assumption is that the customer will provide licensing, there may be discrepancies between the features required for the design and the customer’s existing licensing. This risk ensures that the architect verifies that the customer’s licensing aligns with the solution requirements.

Design phase: The purpose of the Design phase is to define how the solution will meet the specific requirements. During this phase, the architect works closely with stakeholders to understand their needs and translate those needs into a technical design. A key activity in this phase often involves refining the solution details through interviews and discussions with key stakeholders to ensure that the design aligns with the business and technical requirements.

The database must be backed up every day during the maintenance window of 1:00AM and 3:00AM.

This is a logical design requirement because it specifies the timing for the backup operations. It's important to define backup schedules to align with the maintenance window, ensuring minimal disruption to production workloads.

The database will be backed up using an API-based backup solution.

This is a logical design decision that specifies the method of backup. Using an API-based backup solution is a modern, efficient way to ensure consistent and application-aware backups of databases.