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A customer is designing a new VCF workload domain for a mixed workload environment. They want the storage architecture to eliminate a dedicated storage network fabric and provide a single management plane across compute and storage, with linear scalability by adding hosts. However, they also have an existing FC-based array with a large investment they want to eventually retire. Which storage architecture approach best matches the immediate design goal, and why?
HCI (vSAN) architecture combines compute and storage into a single scalable cluster, removing dependency on a separate SAN fabric and providing a unified management experience through vCenter/VCF. Traditional 3-tier architectures (FC, iSCSI, NFS) still require dedicated storage arrays and often separate fabrics, and none of the other options directly satisfy the stated design goal of eliminating a dedicated storage fabric while scaling with hosts.
An architect is designing a VCF workload domain and needs to select supplemental storage for a cluster that already uses vSAN as principal storage. The requirement is to provide additional capacity for large sequential-access file repositories used by an analytics application, and to allow multiple hosts to mount the same volume concurrently without needing a VMFS datastore. Which storage type best fits this supplemental use case?
NFS is a natively shared file-based storage protocol allowing multiple hosts to mount the same volume without needing block-level VMFS formatting, making it well suited for large sequential file access workloads. FC and iSCSI are block protocols requiring VMFS. vSAN ESA is the principal storage in this scenario, not a supplemental external storage type.
A VCF administrator is deploying a new vSAN-based workload domain cluster and wants to take advantage of the latest architecture that removes the caching tier requirement, uses a log-structured file system, and provides improved space efficiency with compression and erasure coding on all-flash NVMe devices. Which vSAN architecture should be selected during cluster deployment?
vSAN ESA is a single-tier architecture that eliminates the separate cache/capacity disk group model used in OSA. It uses a log-structured file system and per-object space efficiency services (compression, adaptive erasure coding) that work independent of RAID configuration, all requiring NVMe-based all-flash hardware. OSA, even all-flash with dedup, still uses the two-tier disk group model.
An organization requires site-level fault tolerance for a VCF workload domain, with the ability to survive the complete loss of one physical site while maintaining VM availability. They will deploy hosts across two active sites plus a witness at a third location, and want to configure this at cluster creation using SDDC Manager. Which vSAN cluster deployment topology satisfies this requirement?
A vSAN Stretched Cluster spans two active/active sites with data mirrored synchronously between them and a witness host at a third site to arbitrate quorum, providing site-level fault tolerance. A 2-Node cluster is typically for ROBO deployments with two hosts and a witness, not full site-level HA at scale. Standard fault domains within one site do not protect against total site loss. Cross-Cluster Capacity Sharing addresses capacity balancing, not availability across sites.
A vSAN administrator notices that a cluster is reporting degraded object health, and vSAN Skyline Health shows repeated congestion warnings along with elevated write latency on several hosts. Investigating further, they discover that one host's disk group has significantly higher utilization than others and is retiring cache destaging slower than incoming write rate. What is the most likely root cause and the correct troubleshooting approach?
Congestion and elevated write latency tied to an imbalanced disk group where destaging cannot keep up with incoming writes points to a capacity/cache bottleneck on that specific disk group. The correct remediation is to investigate disk group balance, capacity utilization, and potentially add capacity devices or rebalance data. This scenario describes OSA-style cache/capacity dynamics, so ESA (no cache tier) would not exhibit this exact congestion pattern the same way. FTT settings, witness connectivity, and rekey operations are unrelated to this specific symptom set.
77 questions covering all exam domains, starting from $20
5 domains from the VMware 3V0-23.25 exam outline, with approximate weightings. Every sample question above is tagged with the domain it comes from
Differentiate between storage architecture types like HCI and traditional SAN, and identify use cases for iSCSI, vSAN, NFS, FC, and NVMe. This foundation determines whether you design a converged infrastructure or maintain separate compute and storage resources.
Sample question from this domain above: Q1
Learn vSAN OSA versus ESA architectures, principal and supplemental storage roles, and how storage integrates with VMware Supervisor for container workloads. Understanding these distinctions shapes how you architect storage for different workload types.
Design vSAN and non-vSAN storage solutions for VCF based on real requirements, then size them correctly for capacity and performance. Design scenarios form the bulk of advanced certification exams, testing whether you can translate business needs into actual infrastructure.
Deploy vSAN clusters including stretched and 2-node configurations, configure data protection and encryption, set up file services and iSCSI targets, and manage day-2 administration. This objective spans the full lifecycle from initial deployment through ongoing management.
Sample question from this domain above: Q4
Monitor and diagnose storage issues using VCF tools, resolve both vSAN and non-vSAN storage problems, and optimize performance. Real-world troubleshooting skills separate advanced practitioners from those who only follow documentation.
Sample question from this domain above: Q5
Common questions about the exam itself
