VMware Questions and Answers

1. What is a Hypervisor?
It is a program that allows multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host. Each operating
system appears to have the host's processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. However, the
hypervisor is actually controlling the host processor and resources, allocating what is needed to each
operating system in turn and making sure that the guest operating systems (called virtual machines)
cannot disrupt each other.

3. What is the difference between the vSphere ESX and ESXi architectures?
VMware ESX and ESXi are both bare metal hypervisor architectures that install directly on the server
hardware.
Although neither hypervisor architectures relies on an OS for resource management, the vSphere ESX
architecture relied on a Linux operating system, called the Console OS (COS) or service console, to
perform two management functions: executing scripts and installing third-party agents for hardware
monitoring, backup or systems management.
In the vSphere ESXi architecture, the service console has been removed. The smaller code base of
vSphere ESXi represents a smaller “attack surface” and less code to patch, improving reliability and
security.

2. What is the hardware version used in VMware ESXi 5.5?

Version 10

Below is the table showing the different version of hardware used in different VMware products along
with their release version
Virtual Hardware Version Products

10 ESXi 5.5

9 ESXi 5.1

8 ESXi 5.0

4. What is a .vmdk file?

This isn't the file containing the raw data. Instead it is the disk descriptor file which describes the size
and geometry of the virtual disk file. This file is in text format and contains the name of the –flat.vmdk
file for which it is associated with and also the hard drive adapter type, drive sectors, heads and
cylinders, etc. One of these files will exist for each virtual hard drive that is assigned to your virtual
 machine. You can tell which –flat.vmdk file it is associated with by opening the file and looking at the
Extent Description field.
5. What are the different types of virtualization?
Server Virtualization – consolidating multiple physical servers into virtual servers that run on a single
physical server.

Application Virtualization – an application runs on another host from where it is installed in a variety
of ways. It could be done by application streaming, desktop virtualization or VDI, or a VM package (like
VMware ACE creates with a player). Microsoft Softgrid is an example of Application virtualization.

Presentation Virtualization – This is what Citrix Met frame (and the ICA protocol) as well as Microsoft
Terminal Services (and RDP) are able to create. With presentation virtualization, an application
actually runs on another host and all that you see on the client is the screen from where it is run.

Network Virtualization – with network virtualization, the network is “carved up” and can be used for
multiple purposes such as running a protocol analyzer inside an Ethernet switch. Components of a
virtual network could include NICs, switches, VLANs, network storage devices, virtual network
containers, and network media.

Storage Virtualization – with storage virtualization, the disk/data storage for your data is consolidated
to and managed by a virtual storage system. The servers connected to the storage system aren’t aware
of where the data really is. Storage virtualization is sometimes described as “abstracting the logical
storage from the physical storage.

6. What is VMware vMotion ?

VMware VMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to
another with zero downtim.

7. What is the difference between clone and template in VMware?

Clone

 A clone is a copy of virtual machine.

 You cannot convert back the cloned Virtual Machine.
 A Clone of a Virtual Machine can be created when the Virtual Machine is powered on

Template

 A template is a master copy or a baseline image of a virtual machine that can be used to create
many clones.
 Templates cannot be powered on or edited, and are more difficult to alter than ordinary virtual
machine.
 9. What is the difference between Thick provision Lazy Zeroed, Thick provision Eager Zeroed and
Thin provision?

Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed

 Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format.

 Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created.

 You can convert the template back to Virtual Machine to update the base template with the latest
released patches and updates and to install or upgrade any software and again convert back to
template to be used for future deployment of Virtual Machines with the latest patches.
 Convert virtual Machine to template cannot be performed, when Virtual machine is powered on.
Only Clone to Template can be performed when the Virtual Machine is powered on.

Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

 A type of thick virtual disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance.
 Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time.

Thin Provision

 It provides on on-demand allocation of blocks of data.

 All the space allocated at the time of creation of virtual disk is not utilized on the hard
disk, rather only the size with utilized data is locked and the size increases as the amount
of data is increased on the disk

10. What is a snapshot?

A snapshot is a “point in time image” of a virtual guest operating system (VM). That snapshot contains an image
of the VMs disk, RAM, and devices at the time the snapshot was taken. With the snapshot, you can return the VM
to that point in time, whenever you choose. You can take snapshots of your VMs, no matter what guest OS you
have and the snapshot functionality can be used for features like performing image level backups of the VMs
without ever shutting them down
11. What is VMware HA?

 VMware HA i.e. High Availability which works on the host level and is configured on the Cluster.

NOTE: Using HA in case of any host failure with RESTART the vms on different host so the vms state will be
interrupted and it is not a live migration

15. What is VMware DRS ?

 Here DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler which dynamically balances resource across various host under
Cluster or resource pool
 16. What is VMware Fault Tolerance?

 VMware Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability to applications running in a virtual machine, preventing
downtime and data loss in the event of server failures.

*) virtual machine files vmware?

 Virtual Machine Files

 When you create a virtual machine, Workstation creates a set of files for that specific virtual machine. Virtual machine files
are stored in either the virtual machines directory or the working directory. Both directories are typically on the host system.

Virtual Machine Files

Extension File Name Description

.vmx vmname.vmx The primary configuration file, which stores virtual

machine settings. If you created the virtual machine with
an earlier version of Workstation on a Linux host, this
file might have a .cfg extension.

.log vmname.log The main log file. If you need to troubleshoot a problem,
refer to this file. This file is stored in the same directory
or
as the .vmx file.
vmware.log

.nvram vmname.nvram The NVRAM file, which stores the state of the virtual
machine BIOS. This file is stored in the same directory
or
as the .vmx file.
nvram

.vmdk vmname.vmdk Virtual disk files, which store the contents of the virtual
machine hard disk drive. These files are stored in the
same directory as the .vmx file.

A virtual disk is made up of one or more virtual disk

files. The virtual machine settings show the name of the
first file in the set. This file contains pointers to the other
files in the set.

If you specify that all disk space should be allocated

when the virtual disk is created, these files start at the
maximum size and do not grow. Almost all of the file
content is virtual machine data. A small portion of the
file is allotted to virtual machine overhead.

If the virtual machine is connected directly to a physical

disk, the virtual disk file stores information about the
partitions that the virtual machine is allowed to access.
Note

Earlier VMware products use the .dsk extension for

virtual disk files.
 vmname-s###.vmdk If you specified that the files can increase, filenames
include an s in the file number, for
example,Windows 7-s001.vmdk.
If you specified that the virtual disk is divided into 2GB
sections, the number of files depends on the size of the
virtual disk. As data is added to a virtual disk, the files
increase to a maximum of 2GB each.

vmname-f###.vmdk If all disk space was allocated when the disk was
created, filenames include an f, for
example,Windows 7-f001.vmdk.

vmname-disk-###.vmdk If the virtual machine has one or more snapshots, some

files are redo log files. These files store changes made to
a virtual disk while the virtual machine is running.
The ### indicates a unique suffix that Workstation adds
to avoid duplicate file names.

.vmem uuid.vmem The virtual machine paging file, which backs up the
guest main memory on the host file system. This file
exists only when the virtual machine is running or if the
virtual machine fails. It is stored in the working
directory.

snapshot_name_number.vmem Each snapshot of a virtual machine that is powered on

has an associated .vmem file, which contains the guest
operating system main memory, saved as part of the
snapshot.

.vmsd vmname.vmsd A centralized file for storing information and metadata

about snapshots. It is stored in the working directory.

.vmsn vmname.Snapshot.vmsn The snapshot state file, which stores the running state of
a virtual machine at the time you take that snapshot. It is
stored in the working directory.

vmname.Snapshot###.vmsn The file that stores the state of a snapshot.

.vmss vmname.vmss The suspended state file, which stores the state of a
suspended virtual machine. It is stored in the working
directory.

Some earlier VMware products used

the .stdextension for suspended state files.
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