VCA-DCV Official Cert Guide: VMware Certified Associate - Data Center Virtualization

by Matthew Vandenbeld, Jonathan McDonald

Overview

Trust the Official Cert Guide series from VMware Press to help you learn, prepare, and practice for exam success. They are the only VMware-authorized self-study books and are built with the objective of providing assessment, review, and practice to help ensure you are fully prepared for your certification exam.

• Master VMware certification exam topics
• Assess your knowledge with chapter-opening quizzes
• Review key concepts with exam preparation tasks
• Reinforce your learning with web-based practice exams
• An excellent "fundamentals" book on vSphere

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The Official VCA-DCV Certification Guide focuses specifically on the objectives for the VCA-DCV, the VMware Certified Associate on Data Center Virtualization exam (VCAD510). Experts Matt Vandenbeld and Jonathan MacDonald share preparation hints and test-taking tips, helping you identify areas of weakness and improve both your conceptual knowledge and hands-on skills. Material is presented in a concise manner, focusing on increasing your understanding and retention of exam topics.

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Well regarded for its level of detail, assessment features, comprehensive design scenarios, and challenging review questions and exercises, this official study guide helps you master the concepts and techniques that will enable you to succeed on the exam the first time.

The official study guide helps you master all the topics on the VCA-DCV exam, including the following:

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• Datacenter virtualization: What is it and what are the components?
• Business challenges solved by virtualization
• Core components of vSphere: the virtual machine, ESXI, high availability
• vSphere storage, including physical versus virtual, storage types, thin provisioning, and more
• vSphere networking fundamentals, physical versus virtual switches, components, policies, I/O
• Mapping business challenges to vSphere solutions

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The Official VCA-DCV Certification Guide is part of a recommended learning path from VMware that includes simulation and hands-on training from authorized VMware instructors and self-study products from VMware Press. To find out more about instructor-led training, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered worldwide, please visit www.vmware.com/training.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780133854503
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	05/08/2014
Series:	VMware Press Certification
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	150
Sales rank:	322,144
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Matthew (Matt) Vandenbeld is a dual VCDX, obtaining the certification inboth Cloud and Data center (VCDX-DCV, VCDX-CLOUD). He also holds VCAP-DCD/DCA/CID/CIA and many other industry certifications. He is currently a Solutions Architect in the Global Center of Excellence at VMware. His role is to create solutions pertaining to the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), train experts in delivering SDDC solutions, and assist in high-end escalations. Matt is very involved in the VMware community; he regularly attends VMUGs in his region, blogs at cloudmatt.com, participates in community podcasts, and is active on Twitter (@vcloudmatt). Matt is passionate about virtualization and assisting the development of others in the industry.

 

Jonathan McDonald is currently a Senior Solutions Engineer at VMware, participating in the development of validated solution architectures, comprehensive professional services, and scalable deep technical training as a part of the Professional Services Engineering group of VMware Global Services. He has been with VMware since 2005. Prior to joining Professional Services Engineering, Jonathan was a Staff Technical Support Engineer with VMware Global Support Services, specializing in the vCenter product and supporting technologies. In this role, he dealt with customer escalations, mentoring, and interactions with the internal product engineering teams. Through these different functions, he was able to provide not only reactive support for in-depth technical problems, but also proactive support by trending on the most commonly experienced problems and providing this information to engineering. Jonathan regularly speaks at VMware conferences and workshops (VMworld, Tech Summit, VMUG, and Customer Support Days) as well as other industry events. Jonathan is a great supporter of VMware Certifications, having completed 17 VMware technical certifications since 2006. He has also participated in the development of VMware’s VCP- and VCAP-level content for Data center and Cloud certifications.

Table of Contents

About the Authors xiii

Dedications xiv

Acknowledgments xv

About the Reviewers xvi

We Want to Hear from You! xvii

Reader Services xvii

 

Introduction xviii

 

Chapter 1 Datacenter Virtualization 3

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 3

Foundation Topics 6

What Is Virtualization? 6

Datacenter Components 7

    Compute 8

    Storage 9

Why Virtualize? 11

    Optimization 11

    Availability 12

    Management 13

    Scalability 14

Summary 15

Exam Preparation Tasks 16

    Review All the Key Topics 16

    Definitions of Key Terms 17

    Chapter Review Questions 17

 

Chapter 2 Business Challenges 21

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 21

Availability Challenges 24

    What Is Availability? 24

    Common Business Challenges 25

        Hardware Availability 25

        Application Availability 26

        Maintenance 26

        Environmental Availability 26

Management Challenges 27

    What Is Management? 27

    Common Business Challenges 28

        Datacenter Management 28

        Provisioning Management 29

        Compliance Management 29

Scalability Challenges 29

    What Is Scalability? 29

    Common Business Challenges 31

        Infrastructure Scalability 31

        Virtual Machine and Application Scalability 31

Optimization Challenges 32

    What Is Optimization? 32

    Common Business Challenges 33

        Monitoring Optimization 33

        Efficiency Optimization 33

        Performance Optimization 34

SMB Versus Enterprise Challenges 34

    Size of the Company 34

Summary 36

Exam Preparation Tasks 37

    Review All the Key Topics 37

    Definitions of Key Terms 37

    Review Questions 37

 

Chapter 3 vSphere Components 41

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 41

Foundation Topics 45

Virtualization Concepts 45

    Virtual Resources 45

        Processor 46

        Memory 46

        Hard Disk 47

        Network 47

    Virtual Machines 48

    Hypervisors 50

        ESXi Hosts 50

        Others 51

Managing Resources 51

    vCenter Server 52

    Clusters 53

        Managed Hosts 53

        Clusters of Hosts 53

    Resource Pools 54

    Distributed Resource Scheduler 55

        DRS Scheduling Functions 55

        Distributed Power Management Functions 56

High Availability and Disaster Recovery 57

    VMware High Availability 57

    VMware Fault Tolerance 59

    VMware Application High Availability 60

    vSphere Data Protection 61

    VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 62

    vSphere Replication 64

Migration 64

    vMotion 65

    Storage vMotion 66

    Physical to Virtual 67

Other VMware Datacenter Software 68

    vCenter Operations Manager 68

    vCenter Confi guration Manager 70

Summary 70

Exam Preparation Tasks 71

    Review All the Key Topics 71

    Definitions of Key Terms 72

    Review Questions 72

 

Chapter 4 vSphere Storage 77

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 77

Foundation Topics 81

Physical Versus Virtual Storage 81

    Direct Attached Storage 82

    Network Attached Storage 83

    Storage Area Network Array 83

Storage Protocols 83

Filesystem Types 84

    NFS 84

vSphere Datastores 84

vSphere Datastore Clusters 85

Virtual Machine Disk Types 86

    VMDK 86

    RDM 87

Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control 87

    SDRS 87

Storage Policies 89

Other vSphere Storage Technologies 90

    vSphere Storage Appliance 90

    Virtual SAN 90

    vSphere Flash Read Cache 91

    Virtual Volumes 91

Availability 91

Disaster Recovery 92

    vSphere Data Protection 93

    vSphere Replication 94

Summary 95

Exam Preparation Tasks 96

    Review All the Key Topics 96

    Definitions of Key Terms 97

    Chapter Review Questions 97

 

Chapter 5 VMware vSphere Networking 101

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 101

Foundation Topics 104

Physical Versus Virtual Networking 104

VMware Virtual Switches 106

    Virtual Standard Switch 106

    Distributed Virtual Switches 109

    Third-Party Virtual Switches 111

vSphere Networking Components 111

    Portgroup 111

    VMKernel Network Adapter 116

    Network Input/Output Control 117

    Quality of Service 119

    NetFlow 119

Summary 119

Exam Preparation Tasks 120

    Review All the Key Topics 120

    Definitions of Key Terms 120

    Chapter Review Questions 120

 

Chapter 6 Virtualization Solutions That Solve Business Challenges 125

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 125

Foundation Topics 128

Availability Challenge Solutions 128

    Solutions to Availability Challenges 128

    Solving Common Business Challenges 129

        Hardware Availability 129

        Application Availability 129

        Maintenance 130

        Environmental Availability 130

Management Challenge Solutions 131

    Solutions to Management Challenges 131

    Common Business Challenges 131

        Datacenter Management 132

        Provisioning Management 132

        Compliance Management 133

Scalability Challenges 133

    Solutions to Scalability Challenges 133

    Common Business Challenges 134

        Infrastructure Scalability 134

        Virtual Machine and Application Scalability 134

Optimization Challenges 135

    Solutions to Optimization Challenges 135

    Common Business Challenges 135

        Monitoring Optimization 136

        Efficiency Optimization 136

        Performance Optimization 137

SMB Versus Enterprise Challenge Solutions 137

    Size of the Company 138

Summary 139

Exam Preparation Tasks 139

    Review All the Key Topics 139

    Key Technologies 140

    Review Questions 140

 

Appendix A Answers to the “Do I Know This Already?” Quizzes and Chapter Review Questions 143

 

Glossary 153