VMware is a leading company that has numerous job openings and offers salary. Whether you are fresher or experienced this article will help you in your preparation for landing a job in VMware.
Questions asked in VMware interviews revolve around the concepts of content libraries, virtual storage, virtual networking, fault tolerance, vSphere, vSAN, etc.
This article consists of the top 50+ interview questions that have been asked recently and very frequently in VMware that will not only help you in your preparation but also you will understand the concepts better.
Utilize this article on how to increase your chances for selection.
Top VMWare Interview Questions & Answers
Question 1. What do you mean by VMware?
Answer: VMware provides various software and applications. The products of VMware can be mainly classified into two, server-side applications and desktop applications. The products of VMware helps in running multiple operating systems and applications on a single system with very few services.
Question 2. What is the VCloud suite?
Answer: vCloud Suite is used to incorporate together with the various components of VMware with capabilities of a complete set of cloud infrastructure in a single package. It has disaster recovery, virtualization, data center services, application management, and many more.
Question 3. Tell me about the different storage availabilities offered by the VCloud suite.
Answer: The different storage availability in the VCloud suite are-
- Data protection- It deploys backup and recovery based on EMC Avamar.
- Application HA- It offers high availability on specific applications.
- Storage VMotion- It decreases the input-output bottlenecks of VM storage by employing proactive storage migration.
- Storage DRS- It balances the virtual machines based on the storage capacity and latency of input-output.
Question 4. What is VMware DRS?
Answer: VMware DRS stands for VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler. It is used to balance the resources across the different hosts under the resource cluster or pool.
Question 5. Explain VMKernel.
Answer: VMKernel is a virtualization interface between the ESXi host and VM. It is used to store VMs and it allocates ESXi resources to VMs like storage, memory, CPU, etc. Also used to control features like traffic management, NFS, fault tolerance, etc.
Question 6. What is VDS?
Answer: VDS stands for Virtual Distributed Switch. It acts as a single switch for providing Central provisioning and administration for the virtual network.
Question 7. What are the benefits of VDS?
Answer: Benefits of VDS include-
- Central administration
- Monitoring
- Central provision.
Question 8. What is a VLAN?
Answer: VLAN stands for virtual LAN. It is used to break the broadcast traffic into logic groups and to separate one broadcast domain into several smaller domains.
Question 9. List the features of the VMware tool.
Answer: The features of VMware tools are-
- It is easier to maintain a virtual machine.
- It allows a web browser interface.
- You can set the configuration in a simple wizard.
Question 10. What is meant by .vmdk file?
Answer: .vmdk file disk descriptor file. It tells us about the memory and the size of the virtual disk file and contains flat .vmdk file associated with heads, drive sectors, hard drive adaptor, cylinders, and others.
Question 11. What is the need for virtualization?
Answer: Virtualization-based saves time and reduces the energy required to power the physical servers by decreasing the number of physical servers needed.
Question 12. What is a hypervisor?
Answer: A hypervisor also known as in monitor is a kind of software package or hardware that is used to make and to run virtual machines.
Question 13. Explain the working of the hypervisor.
Answer: The laptop or system on which the hypervisor runs one or more virtual machine is referred to as the guest machine. The hypervisor manages the execution of guest operational systems presenting the guest operational system with a virtual operational platform.
Question 14. What are the 10 bits of data needed to put in ESXi?
Answer: These are-
- Installation location
- IP address
- Keyboard layout
- Host Name
- Gateway
- VLAN ID
- Subnet Mask
- Root Positive Identification
- Primary DNS
- Secondary DNS
Question 15. What happens if the .nvram file is deleted from VM?
Answer: The .nvram file stores the BIOS state of a virtual machine. If it gets deleted then after powering the virtual machine .nvram file is created again.
Question 16. Which setup is the most effective when a storage failure occurs and impacts multiple data stores?
Answer: The most effective way to deal with such situations if you have a continuous backup of the VMs on a different storage atmosphere that can be used to restore the lost virtual servers.
Question 17. What is NFS?
Answer: NFS stands for the network file system.
It is a protocol used to communicate with a NAS device. It is used by the ESXi host.
Question 18. What is NAS?
Answer: NAS is a specialized storage device used to connect to the network and to provide file access services to the ESXi host.
Question 19. What are the monitoring methods that are used in vSphere HA?
Answer: The monitoring methods used are-
- Datastore Heartbeat
- Network Heartbeat
Question 20. What is Share?
Answer: Share is a value that indicates the priority of a VM access with the given resource.
Question 21. What is Reservation?
Answer: It is a value that is required for a VM to start and is defined in the form of CPU / memory.
Question 22. What is Limit?
Answer: Limit is the threshold value that defines the maximum consumption cycle of the CPU or physical host memory.
Question 23. What components are used in VMware infrastructure?
Answer: The components that are used in VMware infrastructure are-
- License Server
- Virtual Center server
- Database servers
- Web browser
- ESX server host
- VMware infrastructure client
Question 24. What are the new features of vSphere 5?
Answer: The new features of vSphere 5 are-
- vSphere networking enhancement
- vCenter server enhancement
- vSphere storage enhancement
- Virtual machine enhancement
- ESXi hypervisor enhancement
Question 25. Define VDI.
Answer: VDI stands for virtual desktop infrastructure. It uses a thin client to connect the desktop of the end-user. It can also be connected using VMware Horizon view.
Question 26. What are the different VLAN tagging types?
Answer: There are three types of VLAN tagging. These are-
- External switch tagging(EST)
- Virtual switch tagging(VST)
- Virtual guest tagging(VGT)
Question 27. What is a template?
Answer: A converted format of VM used to create predefined VM settings is called a template. The installed VM can be converted into a template but cannot be powered on.
Question 28. Define Snapshot.
Answer: A snapshot is a copy of VM which has timestamp as its restore point.
Question 29. What is the network policy for MAC address changes?
Answer: The policy states that on selecting accept, the request will be accepted by a host that will change the effective MAC address. By default, it is Reject.
Question 30. What is PSC?
Answer: PSC stands for platform services controller. Version 6 of VMware vSphere had first introduced this to handle infrastructure security functions.
Question 31. What are the components of PSC?
Answer: There are three main components of PSC-
- Licensing service.
- VMware certificate authority.
- Single sign-on.
Question 32. Mention the three network security policies on vSwitch.
Answer: The three policies are-
- MAC address change.
- Promiscuous mode.
- Forged transmits.
Question 33. What are the different vCentre server deployments?
Answer: External deployment and embedded deployment.
Question 34. Define the promiscuous mode.
Answer: In promiscuous mode on selecting accept VM receives all the traffic port through vSwitch.
Question 35. What do you mean by fault-tolerant logging?
Answer: On configuring the fault-tolerant logging mode communication between the two ESXi hosts is enabled. The VM kernel ports should be present for configuring FT.
Question 36. Define VSS.
Answer: When VMs are hosted on a single physical host VSS is required. The working of VSS is like a physical switch. It detects which two VMs want to communicate on the same physical server.
Question 37. What is the importance of Port groups?
Answer: The port groups are used to segregate the network traffic. vMotion, FT, management traffic is the port groups that are used for this purpose.
Question 38. State the requirement of VMware tools?
Answer: The VMware tools is a suite of utilities that enhance the performance of the guest operating system. It also improves the management of the virtual machine. Important functionalities are missed if VMware Tools is not installed.
Question 39. What is VMware HA?
Answer: VMware high availability feature works at the host level and is used to configure the cluster. High Availability cluster restarts and migrates all the VM at the host level.
Question 40. Define RDM.
Answer: RDM is the short form for raw device mapping. It is a file that is present in the VMFS volume and it serves as the proxy for devices in natural physical form. It also stores data on LUN.
Question 41. What are the different configurations in VSAN?
Answer: The two configurations are Hybrid and All-Flash configurations.
Question 42. What do you mean by VMware DPM?
Answer: The VMware DPM that is distributed power management is used to monitor the cluster resources and is a feature present in the VMware DRS. It is used to turn off the unused host and consolidates the workload if the resource is reduced.
Similarly, if the resource increases the un-used hosts are powered on.
Question 43. What are the prerequisites for running ESXTOP on the ESXi host?
Answer: There are two prerequisites to run ESXTOP on ESXi. These are-
- vSphere client is installed in which the host is to be configured.
- SSH is enabled using troubleshooting options.
Question 44. What are the types of content libraries?
Answer: There are mainly three types of content libraries-
- Local control library.
- Tha Subscribed library which syncs with the published library.
- The published library is the local library consisting of ISO images and VM templates for a subscription.
Question 45. Which components are used in vCentre server architecture?
Answer: The components that are used in the vCenter architecture consists of-
SSO is a security domain. Web client and vSphere client which is the user interface.vCenter Server database which is used to store security roles and resource pools.
Question 46. What are the limitations or requirements for a content library?
Answer: The requirements on limitations of the content library are as follows-
- For every 24 hours the sync should happen.
- Each library must consist of less than or equal to 256 items.
- The single storage size is 64TB.
Question 47. What is meant by VCB?
Answer: VCB means VMware consolidated backup which provides backup to the third-party tools. It is the backup proxy server and not software. It is very helpful to back up the virtual servers of VMware ESX.
Question 48. Give the benefits of VCB.
Answer: The benefits of VCB are-
- It utilizes the snapshots of VMware.
- It provides backups of image level.
- It provides LAN free backup.
- It prevents virtual machines to shut down abruptly.
- It provides virtual server centralized storage backup.
- It prevents the backup loading agent on VM, etc.
Question 49. What is vApp?
Answer: vApp is a group of VM is used to manage and pack multi-tiered applications.
Question 50. Give the naming conventions for iSCSI.
Answer: Naming conventions for an iSCSI are-
- EUI (Extended Unique Identifier)
- IQN (the iSCSI Qualified Name)
Question 51. What is the network policy of forged transmit?
Answer: On selecting Accept, the host will not compare the and effective MAC address transmitted from a VM. Reject is the default mode.
Conclusion
In the above article, you will find the most important and frequently asked questions for VMWare interviews. If you have read this article thoroughly you will be better prepared for the interview. ALL THE BEST.
