Deploying and Configuring vCenter

Question 1

Explain what vCenter is used for.

Answer 1

vCenter acts as a central administration point for ESXi hosts and virtual machines. With vCenter, you can pool and manage the resources of multiple hosts. vCenter is deployed as a virtual appliance. You deploy vCenter Server Appliance on an ESXi hosts in your infrastructure.

Question 2

What is the vCenter Server Appliance?

Answer 2

is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine, which is optimized for running vCenter and the vCenter components

Question 3

What software comes packaged in the vCenter Server Appliance?

Answer 3

– Photon OS
– PostgreSQL database
– vCenter services

Question 4

What are some services included in the vCenter Server Appliance?

Answer 4

– vCenter Server
– vSphere Client
– License Service
– Content Library
– vSphere Lifecycle manager

All vCenter services are installed on a single VM

Question 5

What components make up the vCenter architecture?

Answer 5

vSphere Client - use this client to connect to vCenter and manage your ESXi hosts centrally. When vCenter manages an ESXi host, you should always use vCenter and the vSphere Client to manage that host

vCenter database - the vCenter database is a critical component. The database stores inventory items, security roles, performance data, and other critical information for vCenter

Managed hosts - you can use vCenter to manage ESXi hosts and the VMs running on ESXi hosts

Question 6

Explain vCenter Single Sign-On.

Answer 6

vCenter Single Sign-On allows vSphere components to communicate with each other through a secure token mechanism. vCenter Single Sign-On can authenticate users using built-in or external identity providers

Question 7

What are the built-in identity providers used by vCenter Single Sign-On?

Answer 7

vCenter uses the vsphere.local domain as the defualt identity source. You can configure vCenter to use Active Directory as the identity source using LDAP, LDAPS, OpenLDAP or OpenLDAPS

Question 8

What external identity provider is supported with vCenter Single Sign-On?

Answer 8

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)

Question 9

How does vCenter Single Sign-On work using vCenter as the identity provider?

Answer 9

1) the user logs in to the vSphere Client
2) vCenter Single Sign-On authenticates credentials against a directory service (for example, Active Directory)
3) a SAML token is sent back to the user’s browser
4) the SAML token is sent to vCenter, and the user is granted/denied access

Question 10

What is Enhanced Linked Mode and what are some of the benefits?

Answer 10

Enhanced Link Mode allows you to log in to the vSphere Client and manage the inventories of all the vCenter instances in the group.

– you can link up to 15 vCenter instances in one vCenter Single Sign-On domain
– you can log in to all linked vCenter instances simultaneously with a singler username and password
– you can view and search the inventories of all linked vCenter instances in the vSphere Client
– you can replicate roles, permissions, licenses, tags, and policies (such as storage policies across linked vCenter instances)

Question 11

How does communication happen with ESXi and vCenter?

Answer 11

the vSphere Client is the primary method to manage ESXi hosts. you can use the VMware Host Client to communicate directly with an individual ESXi host.

vCenter provides direct access to the ESXi host through a vCenter agent called virtual provisioning X agent (vpxa). The vpxa process is automatically installed on the host and started when the host is added to the vCenter inventory. The vCenter service (vpxd) communicates with the ESXi host daemon (hostd) through the vCenter agent (vpxa)

Clients that communicate directly with the host, and bypass vCenter, converse with hostd. The hostd process runs directly on the ESXi host and manages most of the operations on the ESXi host. The hostd process is aware of all VMs that are registered on the ESXi host, the storage volumes visible to the ESXi host, and the status of all VMs

Question 12

In vCenter 8.0, how many hosts per vCenter instance are allowed?

Answer 12

2,500

Question 12

In vCenter 8.0, how many powered-on VMs per vCenter instance are allowed?

Answer 12

40,000

Question 12

In vCenter 8.0, how many registered VMs per vCenter instance are allowed?

Answer 12

45,000

Question 12

In vCenter 8.0, how many powered-on VMshosts per cluster are allowed?

Answer 12

96

Question 13

In vCenter 8.0, how many VMs per cluster are allowed?

Answer 13

8,000

Question 14

What are the steps required to deploy a vCenter Server Appliance?

Answer 14

1) verify that all vCenter Server Appliance system requirements are met
2) get the fully qualified domain (FQDN) or the static IP of the host machine on which the vCenter Server Appliance is going to be installed
3) get FQDN and IP address to assign to vCenter Server Appliance
4) ensure that date and time on all VMs in the vSphere network are synchronized

Question 15

How many stages are required in the process to install vCenter Server Appliance? Explain both stages.

Answer 15

2 - Stage 1 - Deployment of OVF
Stage 2 - Configuration

1) Deployment of OVF
- accept the EULA (End-User License Agreement)
- connect to the target ESXi host or vCenter System
- define the vCenter Server Appliance name and root password
- select compute size, storage size, and datastore location (think disk)
- define network settings
- OVF is deployed to the ESXi host
- disks and networking are configured

2) Configuration
- configure time synchronization mode and SSH access
- create a vCenter Single Sign-On domain or join an existing SSO domain
- join the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

In stage 2, you configure whether to use the ESXi host or NTP servers as the time synchronization source. You can also activate SSH access. SSH access is deactivated by default

Question 16

Using the vSphere Client where would you find the vCenter system settings?

Answer 16

select the vCenter system in the navigation pane, click the configure tab, and then expand settings

Question 17

Where in the vSphere Client would you find the host and cluster objects of the vCenter inventory?

Answer 17

Host and Clusters Inventory View

Question 18

The VMs and Templates inventory view shows what information?

Answer 18

all VM and template objects in a data center

Question 19

What tasks are involved with populating and organizing virtual data center inventory?

Answer 19

1) creating data centers
2) creating clusters to consolidate the resources of multiple hosts and VMs
3) adding hosts to the clusters or to the data centers
4) organizing inventory objects in folders
5) setting up networking by using vSphere standard switches or vSphere distributed switches
6) configuring storage systems and creating datastore inventory objects to provide logical containers for storage devices in your inventory

Question 20

Define the term permission in the context of vCenter.

Answer 20

Gives one user or group a role (set of privileges) for the selected object. A permission is set on an object in the vCenter object inventory. Each permission associates the object with a group or user and the group or user access roles. For example, you can select a VM object, add one permission that gives the Read-only role to group 1, and add a second permission that gives administrator role to user 2.

Question 21

What are the rules for applying permissions?

Answer 21

to assign a permission:
1) select an object
2) select a Domain
3) select a User/Group
4) select a Role
5) propagate the permission to the child objects

Question 22

How do you create a custom role?

Answer 22

duplicate an existing role and then customize the privileges; best practice is to define a role using the smallest number of privileges possible to maximize security and control over the environment; give roles names that explicitly indicate what each role allows

Question 23

How do you assign global permission to a user?

Answer 23

Global permission allows access to all vCenter objects, including content libraries, vCenter instances and tags

1) log into vSphere Client
2) navigate to administration
3) click Access Control in the left-pane and select Global Permissions
4) click Add
5) select a User or Group
6) assign a role
7) select OK

Question 24

What are vSphere events?

Answer 24

vSphere events are records of user actions or system actions that occur on objects in the vCenter inventory

Question 25

What are the steps to configure logging levels in vCenter?

Answer 25

1) in the vSphere Client, select the vCenter instance in the navigation pane
2) click the Configure tab
3) under settings, select General
4) click Edit
5) select Logging settings in the left pane
6) select an option from the Log level drop-down menu

Question 26

List the different logging levels and description of each.

Answer 26

1) None - turns off logging
2) Error (errors only) - displays only error log entries
3) Warning (errors and warnings) - displays warning and error log entries
4) Info (normal logging) - displays information, error and warning log entries
5) Verbose - displays information, error, warning, and verbose log entries
6) Trivia (extended verbose) - displays information, error, warning, verbose and trivia log entries