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VMware Interview Questions and Answers

Updated Mar 12, 2019

What is VMware?

VMware is a software that enables you to do virtualization and cloud computing in your host computer. You can run a virtual computer from your own computer. The basis of virtualization technologies of VMware is the bare-metal hypervisor ESX/ESXi in the x86 architecture.

What is VMware Used For?

VMware is used for virtualization. This means you can generate a virtual version of your device, like a server, network storage device, or an operating system to create one or more execution environments.

What is VMware Tools?

VMware Tools is a set of utilities that boosts the performance of the device’s virtual operating system. It also improves the management of the virtual machine. Some of the features available with VMware Tools are:

  • Quicker graphics performance
  • Improve mouse performance
  • Share folders between host and guest systems
  • Copy and paste text, graphics, and files between host and guest systems
  • Synchronize the clock in the virtual device with that of the host

What is VMware Workstation?

VMware Workstation is a software for a virtual machine that is compatible with x86 and x86-64 computer. This enables your device to use several operating systems in a single host device. Every virtual device can execute a single case of any operating system (Microsoft, Linux, etc.) concurrently. VMware is high compatible with respect to hardware and works to bridge the host device with the virtual machine. However, installation of device drivers must be completed through the host machine.

What Does VMware NSX Stand For?

VMware NSX stands for a family of virtual networking and security software products developed by VMware's vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) along with Nicira's Network Virtualization Platform (NVP).

How To Use VMware?

After successful installation of VMware, you can use it on your host device by starting the virtual machine. To do it, you must first click on the VM menu and then choose the virtual machine that you want to use. You can either start the virtual machine as per routine or directly boot into the virtual BIOS. To stop the virtual machine, you simply select the machine and select the VM menu. From the Power option, you can choose between Power Off or Shut Down Guest. You may also shut the virtual machine by selecting the shutdown option in the virtual operating system. You can use drag and drop to transfer files between the host device and the virtual device.

What is DRS In VMware?

VMware DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler. VMware DRS is a cluster of hosts and virtual machines that share resources and have a common interface. It balances the computing workloads with the available resources in the virtualized environment. VMware Drs is a part of VMware Infrastructure 3, which is a virtualization suite.

What is VMware Vsphere?

VMware vSphere is a server virtualization platform that is a part of VMware's suite. It includes the ESXi hypervisor as well as vCenter management software. It is a complete product for implementing and handling the infrastructure of a virtual machine on a large scale. The VSphere undergoes regular upgrades that add features and introduce modifications to the application program interface (API).

What is Hypervisor In VMware?

Hypervisor in VMware is the monitor of the virtual machine that constructs and runs the virtual machine. It enables a host computer to support numerous guest VMs by virtually sharing the resources, such as processing and memory. There are two types of hypervisors. Type 1 hypervisors run directly on the host device’s hardware while Type 2 hypervisors run like any other software on the operating system.

What is Fault Tolerance In VMware?

Fault Tolerance is a feature of vSphere that enhances VMware’s High Availability technology and provides providing continuous protection to your virtual machine. It creates a secondary virtual machine on a different ESX host. This secondary machine shares the same virtual files as the primary machine. However, only the primary virtual machine can produce the outputs. So, both the machines act like one until there is a failure in the primary virtual machine. In this case, the secondary machine will take over.

How to configure Fault Tolerance in VMware?

The steps to configure fault tolerance in VMware are-

  • Go to Host in the vSphere Web Client.
  • Under Manage, choose Networking and then VMkernel adapters.
  • Click on add host networking.
  • In Select connection type, choice VMkernel Network Adapter and then click on Next.
  • In the Select target device page, select either an existing standard switch or a new vSphere standard switch option.
  • In Port properties, check Fault Tolerance and select Next.
  • Configure network for vMotion VMkernel interface and click Next.
  • Click Finish after reviewing the settings.
  • Turn on Fault Tolerance by right clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Fault Tolerance.

What Is SRM Vmware?

Site Recovery Manager or SRM in VMware is a tool that helps you manage automated data recovery by enabling failover and disaster recovery testing. It speeds up disaster recovery processes by prioritizing the recovery in a specific order. VMware SRM uses a third-party replication to the data on a secondary site.

How To Create Virtual Storage In VMware?

The steps to add virtual storage in VMware are-

  • Open the settings editor under a virtual machine and click on Add.
  • Click Hard Disk in the Add Hardware Wizard and then click on Next.
  • Choose to Create a New Virtual Disk and then click on Next.
  • Select either an IDE disk or an SCSI disk as your virtual storage disk.
  • Fix the capacity of the new virtual storage.
  • You can select Allocate all disk space now to enhance the performance.
  • Choose the filename and location for the virtual disk file as the final step.

How many Disk Types are In VMware?

The three disk types in VMware are-

  • Raw Disks- A raw disk allows a virtual machine to establish direct access to a logical unit number on a storage area network. Therefore, the data file is not stored on a Virtual Machine File System volume. Instead, a small disk descriptor file is generated for the Virtual Machine's working directory on the Virtual Machine File System volume.
  • Thick Disks- All space is allotted at the time of creation of the disk. It may contain stale data on the physical media if prior data have not been cleared. This makes them less secure. There are two types of thick data- zeroed thick disks and eager zeroed thick disks.
  • Thin Disks- The size of these disks can grow over time to reach a maximum size. Thin disks conserve the disk space on a Virtual Machine File System volume but can create problems if you do not monitor their growth.

What Is vSAN In VMware?

Virtual SAN or vSAN in VMware is hyper-converged, software-defined storage (SDS) infrastructure solution that brings together local or direct-attached storage devices. It creates a distributed, shared data store where you can define the storage requirements for the virtual machines. Every host in a vSAN cluster adds storage to the cluster and syndicate to create one unified vSAN datastore.

What are the types of Storages that can be used In Virtual Environment?

The various types of storage in a virtual environment are-

  • Direct-attached storage or DAS- Direct-attached storage can be used in a number of forms. You can use it directly in the server chassis. You may also use it as external storage in case you directly plug it into an SCSI/SAS card on the server's internal bus.
  • Network-attached storage or NAS- Networked-attached storage gives connectivity to a virtual server through a TCP/IP connection and allows access to storage at the file level.
  • Storage area networks or SAN- Storage area networks gives connectivity to a virtual server with the help of either the Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI protocols.

What is Raw Device Mapping in VMware?

Raw Device Mapping or RDM in VMware is a mapping file that behaves as a substitute for the raw physical storage device. It enables a virtual machine to access and use the storage device directly. The Raw Device Mapping contains metadata that allows managing and redirecting disk access to the host device. You can combine the advantages of direct access to a physical device along with the manageability of Virtual Machine File System.

What Is vAPP In VMware?

A vAPP in VMware is a preconfigured virtual machine that combines applications and parameters, which define the operational details and operate on the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. It allows different virtual machines to work together as an application using cloud-computing architectures. Features like nesting vApps within vApps, setting up VMware resource pools and deploying new vApps make it advantageous. 


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