Chapter 14. Manage Virtual Machines

This chapter covers the following topics:

•   Create and Configure Virtual Machines

•   Manage Virtual Machines

•   Advanced Virtual Machine Management

•   Content Library

This chapter contains information related to VMware 2V0-21.20 exam objectives 4.7, 5.6,7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.6, 7.11.4

This chapter provides details on managing virtual machines.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz allows you to assess whether you should study this entire chapter or move quickly to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. Regardless, the authors recommend that you read the entire chapter at least once. Table 14-1 outlines the major headings in this chapter and the corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes and Review Questions.”

1. You are creating a virtual machine in your vSphere 7.0 environment and you want the virtual disk and NVDIMM devices to share the same PMem resources. Which of the following options should you choose?

a. In the memory settings, select PMem

b. In the memory settings, select Standard

c. In the Storage Type settings, select PMem

d. In the Storage Type settings, select Standard

2. You want to change the logging for the VMware Tools installation, such that vminst.log is sent to the host, but vmmsi.log. Which option should you choose?

a. vmx.log.guest.level = “warning”

b. vmx.log.guest.level = “info”

c. vmx.log.guest.level = “verbose”

d. vmx.log.guest.level = “trivia”

3. You want to deploy new virtual machines using Linked Clones. Which of the following should you use?

a. vSphere API

b. vSphere Client

c. Host Client

d. vCenter Management Interface

4. You are updating a virtual machine and want to use hardware version 14. Which of the following Compatibility Settings should you choose?

a. ESXi 7.0 and later

b. ESXi 6.7 Update 2 and later

c. ESXi 6.7 and later

d. ESXi 6.5 and later

5. You want to control the host compatibility for your virtual machines at various levels of the inventory. On which of the following objects can you set the Default VM Compatibility option?

a. Cluster

b. VM folder

c. Virtual machine

d. template

6. Which options should you choose to minimize the time required to create a virtual machine snapshot?

a. Snapshot the memory and quiesce the file system.

b. Snapshot the memory, but do not quiesce the file system.

c. Quiesce the file system, but do Not snapshot the memory

d. Do not quiesce the file system or snapshot the memory

7. You want to enable Microsoft virtualization-based security (VBS) for a Windows virtual machine in a vSphere environment. Which of the following is a requirement?

a. vSphere 7.0 or later

b. virtual machine hardware version 17 or later

c. IOMMU

d. Windows 8 or later

8. You are considering whether to use vGPUs for some of the virtual machines in your vSphere environment. Which of the following is not a common use case for vGPUs?

a. Fast provisioning

b. High end graphics in VDI

c. Machine Learning

d. Artificial Intelligence

9. You are setting permissions for a vCenter Server. You want to ensure a specific user can manage the vCenter Server’s content libraries and content but can only view content libraries belonging to other vCenter Servers. Which settings should you make?

a. Grant the Read Only role as a global permission and the Administrator role on the vCenter Server

b. Grant the Content Library Administrator role as a global permission and Administrator role on the vCenter Server

c. Grant just the Administrator role on the vCenter Server

d. Grant just the Content Library Administrator role on the vCenter Server

10. You want to add items to the content library. Which of the following is not a valid choice?

a. You can import a vApp

b. You can select a virtual machine and choose Clone to Template in Library.

c. You can import an ISO

d. You can migrate a virtual machine to the library.

Foundation Topics

Create and Configure Virtual Machines

You can use the vSphere Client to create and manage virtual machines. The associated procedures are intuitive. The following sections summarize each procedure and provide some related details, such as the required privileges.

Create a New Virtual Machine

The following list contains the required privileges for creating a virtual machine.

•   Virtual machine.Inventory.Create new on the destination folder or data center.

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Add new disk on the destination folder or data center (when adding a new disk).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Add existing disk on the destination folder or data center (when adding an existing disk).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Configure Raw device on the destination folder or data center (when using a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) or SCSI pass-through device).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Configure Host USB device on the destination folder or data center (when attaching a virtual USB device backed by a host USB device).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Advanced configuration on the destination folder or data center (when configuring advanced virtual machine settings).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Change Swapfile placement on the destination folder or data center (when configuring swap file placement).

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Toggle disk change tracking on the destination folder or data center (when enabling change tracking on the virtual machine's disks).

•   Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the destination host, cluster, or resource pool.

•   Datastore.Allocate space on the destination datastore or datastore folder.

•   Network.Assign network on the network where the virtual machine will be connected.

To create a virtual machine, you can use the New Virtual Machine wizard and select Create a new virtual machine. In the wizard, you should provide all required information, including compute resource (host, cluster, or resource pool, or vApp), the storage type and location, virtual machine compatibility, guest OS, Windows Virtualization Based Security (for a Windows virtual machine), and hardware customization.

When selecting the Storage Type on a host that has PMem memory, you can select either the Standard or PMem radio button. If you chose PMem storage for a virtual machine, its default virtual disk, new virtual disk, and NVDIMM devices share the same PMem resources. You should adjust the size of newly added devices. The wizard alerts you if issues exist.

Power on VM

To power on a virtual machine, you can right-click the virtual machine and choose Power On. Some likely causes of power-on failures are provided in the following list.

•   Evaluation period (or license) has expired

•   Insufficient permissions

•   Insufficient storage space to create files, such as the swap file.

•   Assigned MAC address conflicts with VMware reserved MACs

•   Operation would violate admission control.

Open Console to VM

To open a console to the virtual machine, you can use an integrated web-based console or the independent VMware Remote Console (VMRC). To use the integrated web-based console, you should ensure the virtual machine is powered, select it in the inventory pane, and either choose Launch Web Console in the vSphere Client or open browser console in the Host Client.

To use the VMRC to access a virtual machine, you should first ensure it is installed on your local system and, if necessary, prepare a proxy server. Then you can launch it from the vSphere Client or the VMware Host client. In the vSphere Client, select the virtual machine in the inventory pane and select Summary > Launch Remote Console. In the Host Client, select the virtual machine in the inventory pane and select Console > Launch Remote Console.

To configure a proxy server for VMware Remote Console, you can browse to vmrc://settings or use the menu if VMware Remote Console is already open. Choose Preferences in the appropriate menu as described in the following list.

•   On Windows, select VMRC > Preferences.

•   On macOS, select VMware Remote Console > Preferences.

•   On Linux, select File > Remote Console Preferences.

The main steps are to select the Enable proxy for remote virtual machine option and to set the appropriate settings, such as the proxy server’s hostname or IP (IPv4 or IPv6) address and port, and optionally provide user credentials. The specific steps depend on the OS type (windows, Linux, or macOS).

Install and Upgrade VMware Tools

You can install VMware Tools in the guest OS of your virtual machines to enable several features that improve manageability and smooth user interaction. To interactively install VMware Tools using the vSphere Client, you can right-click on a virtual machine, select Guest OS > Install VMware Tools and select Mount, which connects the virtual machine’s first virtual CD-ROM disk drive to the appropriate VMware Tools ISO file based on your guest operating system.. If autorun is configured in the guest OS, the VMware Tools installation may begin automatically. Otherwise, you may need to interactively launch the installer in the guest OS. For example, you may need to launch d:setup.exe in a Windows 64 guest. In many cases, the default installation is adequate. If you need non-default components, such as the Guest Introspection Thin Agent driver, select Custom setup.

The open source implementation of VMware Tools for Linux is Open VM Tools.

Whenever a new VMware Tools version is available, such as following an ESXi upgrade, you should consider upgrading your virtual machines. You should always upgrade VMware Tools prior to upgrading the virtual machine hardware. You can use the same procedure as you used to install VMware Tools, except choose Upgrade VMware Tools.

Previous versions of vSphere allow you to use Update Manager to upgrade virtual machine hardware and VMware Tools. In vSphere 7.0, you can use the vSphere Client directly to upgrade the hardware and VMware Tools for a set of virtual machines in a container, such as a folder or cluster, as described in the Upgrade Virtual Machines section in Chapter 13.

VMware Tools Lifecycle Management provides a simplified and scalable approach for installation and upgrade of VMware Tools. You can configure your virtual machine to automatically check for and apply VMware Tools upgrades each time you power on your virtual machine. Automatic Tools upgrade is not supported for Solaris or Netware guests. The prerequisites for automatic VMware Tools upgrade are that the virtual machines must be hosted by ESX / ESXi 3.5 or later, must be managed by vCenter Server 3.5 or later, must be using VMware Tools shipped with ESX / ESXi 3.5 or later, and must be running a guest OS that is supported for ESX / ESXi 3.5 and vCenter Server 3.5 or later.

You can set the vmx.log.guest.level option as described in Table 14-2 to control the use of log files for VMware Tools installation.

When using the setup.exe command to install VMware Tools, you can use the /mg or the “LOGMODE=G” options to control and suppress logging to the host. To suppress logging during automatic upgrades, you can set the install-vmxGuestLogDisabled parameter to true in the tools.conf file. To use the tools.conf file in some versions of Windows, you may need to create the file and deal with a hidden Application Data or Program Data file. To do so, you could open a text editor (such as Notepad) using Run as administrator. If you change the tools.conf file, you do not need to restart VMware Tools. By default, the tools service will check the config file every 5 seconds for changes.

Shutdown Guest

To stop the virtual machine gracefully, you can right-click on a virtual machine, choose Power > Shutdown Guest. This operation, which requires that VMware Tools is running in guest OS, will safely stop the guest OS and power-down the virtual machine. If Shutdown Guest is not available for a virtual machine, a likely cause is that VMware Tools is not installed or not running.

Clone a Virtual Machine

You can clone a virtual machine to a template. The following list contains the required privileges.

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Create template from virtual machine on the source virtual machine.

•   Virtual machine.Inventory.Create from existing on virtual machine folder where the template is created.

•   Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the destination host, cluster, or resource pool.

•   Datastore.Allocate space on all datastores where the template is created

To clone a virtual machine to template, right-click the virtual machine, select Clone > Clone as Template, and complete the wizard. In the wizard, provide a template name, folder, compute resource, and datastore.

You can clone a virtual machine to a create a new virtual machine. The following list contains the required privileges.

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Clone virtual machine on the virtual machine you are cloning.

•   Virtual machine.Inventory.Create from existing on the data center or virtual machine folder.

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Add new disk on the data center or virtual machine folder.

•   Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the destination host, cluster, or resource pool.

•   Datastore.Allocate space on the destination datastore or datastore folder.

•   Network.Assign network on the network to which you assign the virtual machine.

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Customize on the virtual machine or virtual machine folder (when customizing the guest operating system).

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Read customization specifications on the

•   root vCenter Server (when customizing the guest operating system).

You can clone a virtual machine to create a new virtual machine by right clicking the virtual machine and selecting Clone > Clone to Virtual Machine. In the wizard, you should provide all required information, such as name, compute resource, compatibility, and storage. The procedure is much like the procedure in the Deploy Virtual Machine from Template section in this chapter, including the option to customize the guest OS.

If the source virtual machine has an NVDIMM device and virtual PMem hard disks, the destination host or cluster must have an available PMem resource. If the virtual machine has virtual PMem hard disks, but does not have an NVDIMM device, the destination host or cluster must have an available PMem resource. Otherwise, all hard disks of the destination virtual machine will use the storage policy and datastore selected for the configuration files of the source virtual machine.

Convert Between VM and Template

You can right-click a powered down virtual machine, choose Template > convert to template.

You can convert a template to a virtual machine. This is useful when you want to install new software and guest OS updates in the template. To do so, right-click the template and select Convert Template to Virtual Machine. You need the following privileges

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Mark as virtual machine on the source template.

•   Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the target resource pool

Deploy Virtual Machine from Template

The following list contains the required privileges for deploying a virtual machine from a template.

•   Virtual machine.Inventory.Create from existing on the data center or virtual machine folder.

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Add new disk on the data center or virtual machine folder. (when adding a new virtual disk).

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Deploy template on the source template.

•   Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the target host, cluster, or resource pool.

•   Datastore.Allocate space on the target datastore.

•   Network.Assign network on the target network. (when adding a new network card.)

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Customize on the template or template folder (when customizing the guest operating system).

•   Virtual machine.Provisioning.Read customization specifications on the root vCenter Server (when customizing the guest operating system

To deploy a virtual machine from template, right-click the template and select Clone Deploy from template. In the wizard, you should provide all required information, such as name, compute resource, compatibility, storage, and guest customization options. The guest customization choices are Select an existing specification, Create a specification and Create a specification from an existing application.

Customize the Guest OS

When you clone a virtual machine to template or to a new virtual machine, you have the option to customize the guest OS. Additionally, other scenarios may allow you to customize a guest OS. This section describes guest OS customization.

You can customize the guest OS to change the computer name, network settings, and guest OS licensing to prevent conflicts in the environment. During a cloning operation, you can provide the customization settings or select a pre-built customization specification.

Guest OS customization requires a supported guest OS installed on SCSI node 0:0 and VMware Tools. Windows guest customization requires ESXi version 3.5 or later. Linux guest customization requires Perl in the guest OS. To customize a Linux guest OS, you need to install VMware Tools 10.10.10 or later and enable the enable-custom-scripts option (disabled by default).

Optionally, you can create a custom application for vCenter Server to use to generate computer names and IP addresses during guest customization. To do so, create a custom script based on the sample reference script (sample-generate-name-ip.pl) found in VMware KB Article 2007557 and configure the associated vCenter Server advanced settings. For example, set config.guestcust.name-ip-generator.program to c:perlinperl.exe and set config.guestcust.name-ip-generator.arg1 to c:sample-generate-name-ip.pl.

You can use the following procedure to create a guest customization specification for Linux.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to Menu > Policies and Profiles > VM Customization Specifications.

Step 2. Click the Create a new specification icon.

Step 3. On the Name and target OS page, enter a name and a description for the customization specification, select Linux as a target guest OS, and click Next.

Step 4. On the Computer name page, configure one of the following options for assigning the computer name.

•   Use the virtual machine name

•   Enter a name in the Clone / Deploy wizard

•   Enter a name (For this option, enter a name in the provided box and optionally select Append a numeric value checkbox)

•   Generate a name using the custom application configured with vCenter Server. (For this option, optionally enter a parameter to pass to the application.)

Step 5. Enter the Domain Name and click Next.

Step 6. Select the Time Zone and click Next.

Step 7. On the Customization Script page, you can optionally provide a script to run in the guest OS and click Next.

Step 8. On the Network page, you can choose one of the following options and click Next.

•   Use standard network settings (use DHCP to assign IP configuration.)

•   Manually select custom settings (vCenter Server will prompt the user to provide the IP configuration for each virtual NIC when using the guest customization specification)

Step 9. On the DNS settings page, enter the DNS server and domain settings.

Step 10. Complete the wizard and click Finish.

To create a guest customization specification for Windows, you can use the previous procedure with the following modifications.

•   On the Name and target OS page, select Windows as a target guest OS and optionally select Generate a new security identity (SID).

•   On the Set Registration Information page, enter the virtual machine owner’s name and organization and click Next.

•   On the Windows license page, provide a Windows product key. For a Windows Server specification, either select the Per Seat option or configure the maximum concurrent connections for the Per Server option. Click Next.

•   On the Set Administrator Password page, configure the password, optionally select Automatically logon as Administrator option, and click Next.

•   On the Networking page, if you choose the Manually select custom settings, then use the DNS tab to provide DNS server details and click WINS to provides WINS details.

•   On the Set Workgroup or Domain page, either provide a workgroup name or provide user credentials and a domain name, and click Next

Whenever you create a new virtual machine by deploying from template or by cloning, you can use the wizard to select the Customize the operating system checkbox and select the appropriate specification. To customize an existing virtual machine, right-click the virtual machine in the inventory pane, select Guest OS > Customize Guest OS and select the appropriate specification.

As needed, you can manage guest customization specifications by navigating to Menu > Policies and Profiles > VM Customization Specifications. Here, you can import guest customization specifications. You can also select a specific specification and select one of the following actions.

•   Edit customization spec

•   Duplicate customization spec

•   Export customization spec

•   Delete customization spec

Deploy OVF / OVA Templates

Another method for deploying virtual machines is to leverage Open Virtual Format (OVF) or Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) templates. You can use the vSphere Client to deploy an OVF or OVA template. You can export a virtual machine, virtual appliance, or vApp as an OVF or OVA template to create virtual appliances that can be imported by other users. Compared to other methods, using OVF to export and import virtual machines provides the following benefits.

•   Compressed data (faster downloads and uploads)

•   Validation of the OVF by vCenter Server prior to importing

•   Encapsulation of multiple virtual machines.

OVA is essentially a single-file distribution of an OVF package. Prior to vSphere 6.5, the Client Integration Plug-In is required to export and import OVF and OVA templates. Starting in vSphere 6.5, you can only export to OVF. Deploying a virtual machine from an OVF template is commonly referred to as deploying an OVF.

To deploy an OVF, you can use the following procedure.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, right click on a cluster in the inventory pane.

Step 2. Select Deploy OVF Template.

Step 3. In Select OVF Template page, specify the path to the OVF file as a URL or local file and click Next.

Step 4. Use the wizard to provide information for the new virtual machine, such as name, folder, and compute resource.

Step 5. On the Review details page, verify the OVF template details, such as publisher, download size, and size on disk. Click Next.

Step 6. Complete the wizard by providing typical details for a new virtual machine, such as storage policy, storage location, and network configuration.

Step 7. Optionally customize the deployment properties on the Customize template page.

Step 8. Optionally, select a binding service provider on the vService bindings page.

Step 9. On the Ready to complete page, click Finish.

Manage Virtual Machines

This section covers reoccurring activities that you may perform regarding virtual machines.

Configure Virtual Machine Hardware

When creating or upgrading a virtual machine, you can configure the virtual machine compatibility setting, which controls the ESXi versions on which the virtual machine can run. The compatibility setting controls which virtual machine hardware version is used. The main use cases for configuring the compatibility setting to a version earlier than the default for the host are to maintain compatibility with older hosts and to standardize virtual machine deployment in your environment. The main downside of configuring the compatibility setting to a version earlier than the default for the host is the virtual machine may not be able to use virtual hardware features supported by the host and may not achieve the best performance. Table 14-3 describes virtual machine compatibility options.

The compatibility setting impacts the supported features for the virtual machine. Table 14-4 contains some of the feature sets available in recent hardware versions.

To control the default hardware compatibility for new virtual machines, you can set the Default VM Compatibility setting at the host, cluster, or data center levels. The settings on a host override the settings on a cluster, which override the settings on the data center. To make the settings on a host or cluster, you must have Host.Inventory.Modify cluster privilege. To make the settings on a data center, you must have Datacenter.Reconfigure datacenter privilege.

You can upgrade the compatibility level of an existing virtual machine but should first upgrade VMware Tools. For example, you can select a virtual machine and use the Compatibility > Schedule VM Compatibility Upgrade option to upgrade the compatibility the next time you restart the virtual machine. Optionally, you can select Only upgrade after normal guest OS shutdown to upgrade compatibility during regularly scheduled guest maintenance.

You can change the number of virtual CPUs used by a virtual machine. Specifically, you can set the number of cores and cores per socket. In ESXi 7.0, the maximum number of virtual CPU sockets is 128. To configure a virtual machine with more than 128 virtual CPUs, you must use multicore virtual CPUs.

By default, you cannot add CPU resources to a virtual machine when it is turned on. To change this behavior, you can enable the virtual machine’s CPU hot add option, but the following conditions apply.

•   For best results, use virtual machine compatibility set to ESXi 5.0 or later.

•   Hot adding multicore virtual CPUs requires compatibility set to ESXi 5.0 or later.

•   You cannot use hot adding to increase the number of virtual CPUs for a virtual machine with 128 virtual CPUs or less,

•   You can use hot adding to increase the number of virtual CPUs for a virtual machine that already has more than 128 virtual CPUs.

•   You can disable hot-add for virtual machines with guest operating systems that do not support CPU hot add.

•   For virtual machines with compatibility set to ESXi 4.x and later, to support CPU hot add, set the Number of cores per socket to 1.

•   Hot adding CPU resources to a virtual machine disconnects and reconnects all USB passthrough devices.

To enable CPU hot add, the following prerequisites apply.

•   Latest VMware Tools version.

•   Guest operating system that supports CPU hot add.

•   Virtual machine compatibility is set to a minimum of ESX/ESXi 4.x or later.

•   Virtual machine is turned off.

•   Required privileges: Virtual Machine.Configuration.Settings

CPU identification (CPU ID) masks control the visibility of CPU features to guest OS. Masking CPU features can impact a virtual machine availability for migration using vMotion. For example, if you mask the AMD No eXecute (NX) or the Intel eXecute Disable (XD) bits, you prevent the virtual machine from using those features, but you allow the virtual machine to hot-migrate to hosts that do not include this capability

During specific management operations, such as creating a virtual disk, cloning a virtual machine to a template, or migrating a virtual machine, you can set the provisioning policy for the virtual disk file. You can use Storage vMotion or other cross datastore migrations to transform virtual disks from one format to another. The available virtual disk provisioning policies are described in Table 14-5.

You can change a virtual disk from the thin format to thick format by navigating to Datastore > Files in the vSphere Client and choosing the Inflate action for the virtual disk file. The vSphere Client does not provide a deflate option. To change a virtual disk provisioning type from thick to thin, you can migrate the virtual machine storage and select the appropriate policy.

Creating and growing a virtual disk provisioned for Thick Provision Eager Zeroed may take significantly longer than a virtual disk provisioned for Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed.

You can configure virtual machines with virtual disks greater than 2 TB (large capacity virtual disks), but you must meet resource and configuration requirements. The maximum size for large capacity virtual disks is 62 TB. You should avoid using the maximum size, because some operations, such as those involving snapshot and linked clones, may not finish when the maximum amount of disk space is allocated to a virtual disk. Operations such as snapshot quiesce, cloning, Storage vMotion, and vMotion in environments without shared storage, can take significantly longer to finish. The following conditions and limitations apply to virtual machines with large capacity disks.

•   You must use a guest OS that supports large capacity virtual hard disks.

•   Target hosts for migration and clone operations must use ESXi 6.0 or later.

•   NFS, vSAN, and VMFS5 or later datastores are supported.

•   Fault Tolerance is not supported.

•   BusLogic Parallel controllers are not supported.

To increase the size of a virtual disk, you need the following privileges.

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Modify device settings on the virtual machine.

•   Virtual machine.Configuration.Extend virtual disk on the virtual machine.

•   Datastore.Allocate space on the datastore.

To control how a virtual disk is impacted by snapshots, you can set the disk mode for a virtual disk to the settings described in Table 14-6.

You can set shares for a virtual disk, which work much like CPU or memory shares for a virtual machine. The disk shares provide a relative priority for accessing the disk during periods of disk I/O contention for the underlying storage. The values Low, Normal, High, and Custom are compared to the sum of all shares of all virtual machines on the host. To control the maximum amount of disk I/O for a virtual disk, you can set the virtual disk’s Limit - IOPs value. By default, the virtual disk is set for normal shares and unlimited IOPs.

You can add virtual disks to virtual machines, including new virtual disks, existing virtual disks, and Raw Device Mappings (RDMs). To add an RDM to a virtual machine, you need to use a account with the Virtual machine.Configuration.Configure Raw device privilege, select a target LUN, choose where to store the mapping file, choose a compatibility mode (physical or virtual), and select a disk mode. Disk modes are not available for RDMs using physical compatibility mode.

A storage controller is included by default when you create a virtual machine. You can add additional SCSI controllers (BusLogic Parallel, LSI Logic Parallel, LSI Logic SAS, and VMware Paravirtual SCSI), AHCI, SATA, and NVM Express (NVMe) controllers. The following limitations apply to storage controllers.

•   ESXi 4.x and later compatibility is required for LSI Logic SAS and VMware Paravirtual SCSI.

•   ESXi 5.5 and later compatibility is required for AHCI SATA

•   ESXi 6.5 and later compatibility is required for NVMe

•   BusLogic Parallel controllers do not support large capacity disks.

•   Disks on VMware Paravirtual SCSI controllers may not provide the expected performance if they have snapshots or if the host's memory is overcommitted.

Before changing the storage controller type, you should ensure the guest OS has the drivers for the target controller type, or the disks will become inaccessible. Likewise, in the following cases, adding storage controller types to a virtual machine that use BIOS firmware may cause boot problems and require you to fix by entering the BIOS setup.

•   If the virtual machine boots from LSI Logic SAS or VMware Paravirtual SCSI, and you add a disk that uses BusLogic, LSI Logic, or AHCI SATA controllers.

•   If the virtual machine boots from AHCI SATA, and you add BusLogic Parallel or LSI Logic controllers.

Edit Virtual Machine Options

You can edit a virtual machine and use the VM Options tab for multiple purposes, such as setting VMware Tools scripts, controlling user access to the remote console, configuring startup behavior, and changing the virtual machine name, as summarized in Table 14-7.

A virtual machine name must be unique within the folder where the virtual machine is located. If you move a virtual machine to a different datastore folder or host that already has a virtual machine of the same name, you must change the virtual machine's name to keep it unique. Changing a virtual machine name impacts how the virtual machine is identified by vCenter Server and does not impact file (or folder) names or the guest OS. After changing a virtual machine name, you can leverage Storage vMotion to migrate the virtual machine, which renames the associated files to match the new virtual machine name.

You can encrypt a virtual machine by editing its storage policies or by editing VM Options. Before encrypting a virtual machine, you must meet the following prerequisites.

•   Establish a trusted connection with the KMS and select a default KMS.

•   Create an encryption storage policy (or plan to use the sample VM Encryption Policy).

•   Powered off the virtual machine

•   Verify that you have the required privileges:

•   Verify you have the Cryptographic operations.Encrypt new privilege

•   If the host encryption mode is not enabled, then verify you have the Cryptographic operations.Register host privilege.

You can use the following procedure to encrypt a virtual machine.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine in the inventory pane

Step 2. Select VM Policies > Edit VM Storage Policies and use one of the following methods.

•   Select an encryption storage policy to apply to the virtual machine and its virtual disks and click OK.

•   Click Configure per disk, select the encryption storage policy for VM, select an encryption or other storage policies for each virtual disk, and click OK.

Step 3. If you prefer, you can encrypt the virtual machine, or both virtual machine and disks, from the Edit Settings menu in the vSphere Client.

a. Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.

b. Select the VM Options tab, and open Encryption. Choose an encryption policy. If you deselect all disks, only the VM home is encrypted.

Step 4. Click OK.

Configure Guest User Mappings

You can enable guest OS access for some of your SSO user account to facilitate some administrative tasks, such as upgrading VMware Tools. You can use the following procedure to enroll SSO users to user accounts in guest operating systems by using SSO certificates. Subsequent guest management requests use an SSO SAML token to log in to the guest.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, select a powered-on virtual machine in the inventory pane

Step 2. Click Configure > Guest User Mappings tab.

Step 3. Enter your user name and password and click Log In.

Step 4. In the Guest User Mappings pane, click the Add button.

Step 5. In the dialog box, select the SSO user.

Step 6. Specify a guest OS username and click OK.

Edit OVF Details

You can use the following procedure to edit a virtual machine's OVF settings to customize the OVF environment, OVF transport, and boot behavior after OVF deployment. This information is preserved when you export the virtual machine as an OVF template.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, select a virtual machine in the inventory pane.

Step 2. Click Configure > Settings > vApp options.

Step 3. Click the Edit button.

Step 4. If vApp options are not enabled, select the Enable vApp options check box.

Step 5. Click the OVF Details tab.

Step 6. Set the OVF environment transport option to one of the following.

•   ISO Image: mounts an ISO image with the OVF template to the CD-ROM drive.

•   VMware Tools: initializes the guestInfo.ovfEnv variable with the OVF environment document.

Step 7. Optionally, enable the Installation boot option and delay time in seconds, to automatically reboot the virtual machine after OVF deployment.

Step 8. Click OK

Create and Manage Virtual Machine Snapshots

You can use virtual machine snapshots to capture the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific point in time. A snapshot preserves the following information.

•   Virtual machine settings.

•   Power state.

•   Disk state.

•   (Optional) Memory state.

To take a snapshot, you can right-click a virtual machine, select Snapshots > Take Snapshot, and provide a snapshot name. Optionally, you can provide a snapshot description and select Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory. Also, you can optionally choose Quiesce guest file system. Quiescing the file system requires the virtual machine to be powered on, VMware Tools to be running, and Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory to be deselected.

After creating a snapshot, you can use the Snapshot Manger to view the snapshot hierarchy of the virtual machine, which appears as a tree with branches, as illustrated in Figure 5.X. To open the Snapshot Manager, you can right-click the virtual machine and choose Snapshots > Manage Snapshots. In the Snapshot Manager, the snapshot that appears above the You are here icon is the parent snapshot. If you revert to a snapshot, that snapshot becomes the parent snapshot. If you take a snapshot of a virtual machine that already has at least one snapshot, the new snapshot is a child of the parent snapshot.

To revert a virtual machine to a specific snapshot, select the snapshot in the Snapshot Manager for the virtual machine and select Revert To. This requires you to have the Virtual machine.Snapshot management.Revert to snapshot privilege on the virtual machine.

When you revert the virtual machine to a snapshot, you return its virtual disks and settings to the state captured in the snapshot. If the snapshot includes the memory state, then reverting to the snapshot returns the virtual machine’s memory to that state. You can revert the virtual machine to any available snapshot in the Snapshot Manager. Subsequent snapshots from this point create a new branch of the snapshot tree. When you revert to a snapshot, no snapshots are removed, but you lose the virtual machine’s current disk state. In other words, all changes to disk data made since the last snapshot will be permanently lost. If you revert to a snapshot without memory state, the virtual machine will be in the powered off state.

You can delete a snapshot for a running virtual machine without disrupting its end users. Deleting a snapshot removes your ability to revert to that snapshot’s state in the future. To delete a specific snapshot, select the snapshot in the Snapshot Manager for the virtual machine and select Delete. Optionally, to delete all snapshots, select Delete All.

If the virtual machine is in a state where it has no snapshots but has one or more delta disks contributing to the active state of the virtual machine, then you can consolidate its disks. In this state, you can right-click the virtual machine and select Snapshots > Consolidate. The system will merge the data from delta disks into the base disks and delete the delta disks. In normal conditions, your virtual machine will be in state where the Consolidate option is not available.

Migrate Virtual Machines

To migrate a virtual machine using the vSphere Client, you can right-click the virtual machine in the inventory pane, choose Migrate, and complete the wizard. The details for completing the wizard are dependent on the migration type. The required privileges for each migration type are covered in Chapter 5. You can use the Recent Tasks pane to monitor the progress of your migration.

To cold migrate a virtual machine, you can use the following procedure.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, right-click a powered off virtual machine and select Migrate.

Step 2. Select one of the following migration types and click Next.

a. Change compute resource only

b. Change storage only

c. Change both compute resource and storage

d. Migrate virtual machine(s) to a specific datacenter

Step 3. If you select a migration type that includes a cross host migration, select the destination compute resource (host, cluster, resource pool, or vApp), verify no issues exist in the Compatibility panel, and click Next.

Step 4. If you select a migration type that includes a cross datastore migration, select the virtual disk format (Same as Source, Thin Provisioned, Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed, or Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed), select the appropriate policy in the VM Storage Policy menu and select the destination, as described here.

a. To store all the virtual machines in a datastore, select the datastore and click Next.

b. To store all the virtual machines in a Storage DRS cluster, select the cluster and click Next.

c. To store the virtual machine configuration files and virtual disks in separate locations, click Advanced and configure the destination for the configuration files and each virtual disk. Click Next.

Step 5. For cross host migrations, select the destination network for the virtual machines and click Next. Alternatively, you can click Advanced to assign separate networks to individual virtual machine network adapters.

Step 6. Click Finish.

To perform a hot cross host (vMotion) migration, you can apply the previous cold migration procedure, with the following changes.

•   Start with a powered on virtual machine.

•   Select change compute resource only.

•   You will not be prompted to select a destination datastore.

•   Select either Schedule vMotion with high priority or Schedule Regular vMotion.

To perform a hot cross data store (Storage vMotion) migration, you can apply the previous cold migration procedure, with the following changes.

•   Start with a powered on virtual machine.

•   Select change storage only.

•   You will not be prompted to select a destination host.

To perform a hot cross host and cross data store (vMotion without shared storage) migration, you can apply the previous cold migration procedure, with the following changes.

•   Start with a powered on virtual machine.

•   Select change both compute resource and storage.

•   Select either Schedule vMotion with high priority or Schedule Regular vMotion.

Advanced Virtual Machine Management

This section covers topics related to the configuration and management of virtual machines that are not covered elsewhere in the book.

Manage OVF Templates

To export a virtual machine into a self-contained OVF template, you can select the virtual machine and select Actions > Template > Export OVF Template. You must have the vApp.Export privilege. In the export wizard, you must provide a name and can optionally provide a description and configure advanced options. In the advanced options, you can include details concerning BIOS, UUID, MAC address, boot order, PCI slots, and other settings.

You can browse the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace to discover and download virtual appliances provided by VMware and VMware partners. The varying cost and licensing for each appliance are controlled by the provider.

Virtual Based Security

Starting with vSphere 6.7, you can enable Microsoft virtualization-based security (VBS) on supported Windows guest operating systems. VBS is a Microsoft feature for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 operating systems that uses hardware and software virtualization to enhance system security by creating an isolated, hypervisor-restricted, specialized subsystem. Windows typically uses hashed credentials stored in memory, including Active Directory credentials, that may be subject to the Pass the Hash exploit. In VBS, you can enable a feature called Credential Guard that keeps account hash information outside the memory of the Windows instance, mitigating Pass the Hash. If the hardware TPM is not available or not enabled in the BIOS, then Windows will still use VBS and you can still enable Credential Guard, but the credentials will not be as secure.

On a traditional (non-virtual) Windows server, to prepare for VBS you should ensure its BIOS, firmware, and operating system are set to use UEFI firmware, Secure Boot, hardware virtualization (Intel VT / ADM-V), and IOMMU. You can enable VBS in the Windows operating system. When you reboot Windows, the Microsoft hypervisor will load and will leverage virtualization to bring up additional Windows components, including the credential management subsystem, in a separate memory space. All subsequent communication between Windows and Windows components are via RPC calls run through a Microsoft hypervisor-based communications channel.

In vSphere, to use VBS, you must use virtual hardware version 14 or later. The virtual machine must be set to use UEFI firmware, Secure Boot, hardware virtualization (Intel VT / ADM-V), and IOMMU. In the virtual machine settings, enable the Virtualization Based Security checkbox on the VM Options tab. Finally, you must enable VBS by editing the group policy.

Enabling VBS for the virtual machine does not automatically enable virtual TPM, but you can add a virtual TPM device. A virtual TPM doesn’t have a hardware-based vault. Instead, the data that it secures is written to the NVRAM file, which is encrypted using VM Encryption, providing strong encryption and virtual machine portability.

Manage VMs using PowerCLI

VMware PowerCLI is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell that provides cmdlets for managing and automating VMware products, including vSphere. You can install PowerCLI on a workstation or server in your vSphere environment and use PowerCLI to automate some aspects of your virtual machine management.

The main prerequisites for installing PowerCLI 12.0 on a Windows system are the presence of .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later and Windows PowerShell 5.1. For Linux and macOS systems, the requirements are .NET CORE 3.1 and PowerShell7. The main steps to install PowerCLI are to download the product to the system and run the following command in the PowerShell console.

Install-Module VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

In many cases, you will want to change the execution policy, which is set to the most secure policy by default (Restricted). For example, to change the policy to RemoteSigned,, you can use the following command.

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

The Connect-VIServer cmdlet allows you to connect to a vCenter Server. The Get-VM cmdlet allows you to collect information about virtual machines. You can use the following commands to connect to a vCenter Server named server1.vsphere.local (using the [email protected] account and the password “VMware1!”) and display information for all of its managed virtual machines.

Connect-VIServer -Server server1.vsphere.local -Protocol http -User '[email protected]' -Password 'VMware1!'

Get-VM

To start a virtual machine named win-01, you can use the following commands.

Get-VM win-01 | Start-VM

You can use PowerCLI to create virtual machines from specifications provided in an XML file. The XML content could provide detailed specifications for multiple virtual machines. For example, you can use the following sample XML content, which represents the minimum specifications for two virtual machines named MyVM1 and MyVM2 each having a 100 GB virtual disk.

<CreateVM>
  <VM>
    <Name>MyVM1</Name>
    <HDDCapacity>100</HDDCapacity>
  </VM>
  <VM>
    <Name>MyVM2</Name>
    <HDDCapacity>100</HDDCapacity>
  </VM>
</CreateVM>

If you save the sample content to a file named MyVMs.xml, then you can use the following commands to read the file, parse the XML content into a variable, and create a virtual machine based on each specification.

[xml]$s = Get-Content myVM.xml
$s.CreateVM.VM | foreach {New-VM -VMHost $vmHost1 -Name $_.Name -DiskGB $_.HDDCapacity}

You can use PowerCLI to migrate virtual machines. Consider a scenario where you need to automate frequent, massive migrations of virtual machines between datastores to prepare for storage array upgrades. At the lowest level, you need a command that migrates a virtual machine to a specified datastore. For example, you can use the following command to migrate a virtual machine named MyVM1 to a datastore named DS2.

Get-VM MyVM1 | Move-VM -Datastore DS2

Configure VMs to Support vGPUs

In vSphere 7.0, you can enable your virtual machines to use the processing power of available Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). GPUs are specialized processors developed for parallel processing, primarily for rendering graphical images. In vSphere, its main use case is to support high end graphics in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Recently, the need to support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has emerged has a major use case.

You can use GPUs in different manners in a vSphere environment. For AI/ML use cases, the GPU configuration choice is mostly impacted by size and complexity of the problem being solved. Likewise, for VDI, the GPU configuration choice is impacted by the end user graphics needs. The configuration involves either sharing GPUs with multiple virtual machines or dedicating some GPUs to specific virtual machines. Table 14-8 summarizes the potential GPU configuration for specific AI / ML use cases.

For the VMware Horizon 7 VDI use case, depending on your hardware, you may have multiple options for sharing GPUs. For example, with NVDIA hardware, you can choose to share GPUs using the NIVDIA vGPU (GRID) technology or the Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration,(vSGA) technology. In the vSGA model, the vSphere hypervisor presents a virtual VMware SVGA 3D GPU to each virtual machine. In the GRID model, each hardware GPU presents multiple virtual GPUs that the hypervisor passes through to the virtual machines. In the GRID model, you can use a vGPU profile to assign a portion of the GPU hardware to a virtual machine. The vSGA model tends to be flexible and cost effective for supporting virtual desktops running office, video, and 2D CAD applications. But the performance of the GRID model may be preferred for virtual desktops running 3D modeling software. For a side by side comparison of the vSGA and GRID models, see Figure 14.1.

The procedure to configure the GPU hardware, ESXi host, and virtual machine depend on your choice for GPU configuration. For example, you can use the following procedure to implement the GRID model using a vGPU profile (named grid_p100-8a) to allow a virtual machine to use up to 8 GB of the GPU’s memory.

Step 1. Obtian the NVIDIA vGPU software and license.

Step 2. In the vSphere Client, select the ESXi host in the inventory pane.

Step 3. Navigate to Configure > Hardware > Graphics > Host Graphics

Step 4. Click Edit.

Step 5. Select the Shared Direct (Vendor shared passthrough graphics) option.

Step 6. Reboot the host and enter maintenance mode.

Step 7. In the ESXi Shell, enter the following command, but replace the path to represent the actual path to the downloaded VIB file.

esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/ARL-ESX14-DS1/NVIDIA/NVIDIA-VMware_ESXi_6.7_Host_Driver_390.42-1OEM.670.0.0.7535516.vib

Step 8. Exit maintenance mode.

Step 9. Edit the virtual machine settings and select the option to add a new device.

Step 10. In the New PCI device dropdown, select NVIDIA GRID vGPU.

Step 11. In the GPU Profile dropdown, select an appropriate profile, such as grid_p100-8a.

Step 12. In the virtual machine guest OS, install the appropriate NVIDIA vGPU driver.

Content Library

This section provides details for implementing and using content libraries to provide templates, ISOs, and other content across multiple vCenter Servers in a vSphere environment.

Introduction to Content Library

A Content Library is a container objects for virtual machine templates, vApp templates, ISO images, and other files that you may want to share among multiple vCenter Servers in a vSphere environment. Content libraries allow you to share templates and other files in a manner that provides consistency, compliance, efficiency, and automation when deploying workloads at scale.

A content library contains and manages content in the form of library items. A single library item consists of one file or multiple files. For example, an OVF template is a set of files with the OVF, VMDK, and MF file extensions. When you upload an OVF template to the library, you upload the entire set of files, which the library represents as a single item.

When creating a content library, you can choose to create a local content library or a subscribed content library. With a local library, you store and manage content in a single vCenter Server instance. After creating a local library, you can publish it to make it available for subscription. From another vCenter Server instance, you can create a subscribed content library with a subscription to the published library. With a subscribed library, you can control when to download the subscribed content, either immediately or as needed.

Historically, content libraries supported OVF templates but not standard virtual machine templates. Starting with vSphere 6.7 Update 1, content libraries support virtual machine templates in addition to OVF templates.

Create a Content Library

You can use the vSphere Client to create a content library using the following procedure.

You must have one of the following privileges on the vCenter Server instance.

•   Content library.Create local library

•   Content library.Create subscribed library

You must have Datastore > Allocate space on the target datastore.

Step 1. Open the New Content Library wizard

Step 2. On the Name and location page, enter a name and select a vCenter Server instance for the content library. Click Next.

Step 3. On the Configure content library page, select the type of content library that you want to create and click Next.

•   Local content library: A local content library is accessible only in the vCenter Server instance where you create it by default. Optionally, you can select Enable publishing to make the content of the library available to other vCenter Server instances

•   Subscribed content library: Creates a content library that subscribes to published content library.

Step 4. On the Add storage page, select a storage location for the content library contents and click Next.

Step 5. On the Ready to Complete page, review the details and click Finish

Publish a Content Library

You can publish an existing content library. For example, to publish an existing local, non-subscribed library, you can use the following procedure.

Step 1. Use the vSphere Client to navigate to Content Libraries.

Step 2. Right click on an existing content library and select Edit Settings

a. Select the Enable publishing check box.

b. Click the Copy Link button to copy the URL of your library that you can paste into the settings of a subscribed library.

c. Select Enable user authentication for access to this content library and set a password for the library.

Step 3. Click OK.

Subscribe to a Content Library

When using the previous procedure to create a subscribed content library, you must provide the following information.

Step 1. In the Subscription URL text box, enter the URL address of the published library.

Step 2. If authentication is enabled on the published library, select Enable authentication and enter the publisher password.

Step 3. Select a download method for the contents of the subscribed library: immediately or when needed.

Step 4. If prompted, accept the SSL certificate thumbprint. The SSL certificate thumbprint is stored on your system until you delete the subscribed content library from the inventory.

Content Library Permissions

Content libraries are not direct children of the vCenter Server object in the vSphere inventory. Instead, content libraries are direct children of the global root. This means that permissions set on a vCenter Server do not apply to content libraries even if they are set to propagate to child objects. To assign a permission on a content library, an Administrator must grant the permission to the user as a global permission. Global permissions support assigning privileges across solutions from a global root object

Consider the following scenarios.

•   If a user is granted the Read Only role as a global permission and the Administrator role at a vCenter Server level, then the user can manage the vCenter Server’s content libraries and content but can only view content libraries belonging to other vCenter Servers.

•   If a user is granted the Content Library Administrator role as a global permission, the user can manage all content libraries and content in all vCenter Server instances.

•   If a user is not granted any global permission but is granted the Administrator role at a vCenter Server level, the user cannot view or manage any libraries or content, including the vCenter Server’s local content libraries.

vCenter Server provides a predefined, sample role, Content Library Administrator, that allows you to give users or groups the necessary privileges to manage selected content libraries. You can modify the role or use it as an example to create custom roles. If a user is assigned the Content Library Administrator role on a library, that user can perform the following tasks on that library.

•   Create, edit, and delete local or subscribed libraries.

•   Synchronize a subscribed library and synchronize items in a subscribed library.

•   View the item types supported by the library.

•   Configure the global settings for the library.

•   Import items to a library.

•   Export library items.

Synchronization Options

When configuring the subscribing library, you can choose either to download all libraries’ content immediately or download library content only when needed. The first option starts the full synchronization process immediately. It includes the full content, including the metadata and actual data. The latter option starts the synchronization process for just the metadata immediately. The metadata contains information about the actual content data, allowing users to view and select the associated templates and ISOs. In this case, the actual data is synchronized only as needed when subscribed library objects are demanded. The impact of the on-demand synchronization is that storage space may be saved for the subscribing library, but a delay may exist each time a library item is selected.

To enable automatic synchronization, select the option to Enable automatic synchronization with the external library in the subscribed library settings. Consider the fact that the automatic synchronization requires a lot of storage space, because you download full copies of all the items in the published library.

The content library synchronization method has an impact on VM provisioning time and datastore space usage. If an object is not already downloaded when you go to use it, you may have to wait while the subscribed content library downloads it from the published library. To optimize VM provisioning time, consider setting the download method to immediately. To optimize datastore space usage, consider setting the download method to when needed.

Add Items to the Content Library

You can import items such as OVA / OVF templates and vApps to a content library from your local machine or from a Web server. You can also import ISO images, certificates, and other files. You can add an item that resides on a Web server to a content library, or you can add items to a content library by importing files from your local file system.

You can import an OVF package to use as a template for deploying virtual machines and vApps. You can also import other types of files, such as scripts or ISO files. To import a file, right-click a content library, choose Import Item, select a file, and assign the Item Name.

You can also add content to the library by cloning VMs or templates to the library, as described in the following steps.

Step 1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the virtual machine or template that you want to clone.

Step 2. Select one of the following cloning tasks.

•   Right-click a virtual machine and select Clone > Clone to Template in Library.

•   Right-click a VM template and select Clone to Library.

Step 3. Depending on the selection in the previous step, complete the cloning wizard. For example, if you selected a VM template and chose Clone to Library, then you can use the following steps to create a new template in the content library.

a. Select the Clone as option and choose to create a new template

b. From the content libraries list, select the library in which you want to add the template.

c. Enter a name and description for the template.

d. (Optional) Select the configuration data that you want to include in the template. You can select to preserve the MAC-addresses on the network adapters and include extra configuration.

e. Click OK.

Deploy VMs Using the Content Library

You can deploy virtual machines from the VM templates in your content library using this procedure.

Step 1. Select Home > Content Libraries.

Step 2. Select a content library and click the Templates tab.

Step 3. Right-click a VM Template and select New VM from This Template.

Step 4. On the Select name and location page, enter a name and select a location for the virtual machine.

Step 5. (Optional) To apply a customization specification to your virtual machine, select the Customize the operating system checkbox and click Next.

Step 6. On the Customize Guest OS page, select a customization specification or create a new one, and click Next.

Step 7. On the Select a resource page, select a host, a cluster, a resource pool, or a vApp where to run the deployed VM template, and click Next.

Step 8. On the Review details page, verify the template details and click Next.

Exam Preparation Tasks

As mentioned in the section “How to Use This Book” in the Introduction, you have a couple of choices for exam preparation: the exercises here, Chapter 15, “Final Preparation,” and the exam simulation questions on the CD-ROM.

Review All Key Topics

Review the most important topics in this chapter, noted with the Key Topics icon in the outer margin of the page. Table 14-9 lists a reference of these key topics and the page numbers on which each is found.

Define Key Terms

Define the following key terms from this chapter and check your answers in the glossary:

Microsoft virtualization-based security (VBS)

VMware PowerCLI

Content Library

Open Virtual Format (OVF) template

Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) template

Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)

Review Questions

1. Which of the following is a requirement for guest OS customization?

a. ESXi 5.0 or later

b. VMware Tools 11.0 or latter

c. A supported guest OS installed on SCSI node 0:0

d. A supported guest OS installed on any SCSI node

2. You want to create a virtual machine that can use up to 4096 MB video memory. Which compatibility option should you choose?

a. ESXi 7.0 and later

b. ESXi 6.7 Update 2 and later

c. ESXi 6.7 and later

d. ESXi 6.5 and later

3. You are snapshotting production virtual machines and want to minimize the impact to users of the guest OS and its applications. Which option should you choose?

a. Snapshot the memory and quiesce the file system.

b. Snapshot the memory, but do not quiesce the file system.

c. Quiesce the file system, but do Not snapshot the memory

d. Do not quiesce the file system or snapshot the memory

4. In your vSphere 7.0 environment, you want to export a virtual machine for portability to other systems. Which approach should you use?

a. Export to OVF

b. Export to OVA

c. Export as a VM template

d. Export as a VMDK

5. You are configuring a subscribed content library. Which of the following is used to synchronize content?

a. HTTPS

b. HTTP NFC

c. FTP

d. SCP