Virtualization/Cloud Computing Interview Questions: 1. What's the difference between a vSwitch and dsSwitch? 2. Explain the PSA. 3.

What is VAAI? 4. What is a SCSI reservation? 5. What is the best practices regarding network setup.

Windows Hyper-V Interview Questions Talk about the licensing benefits of Hyper-V under the various editions of Windows Server 2008. Wanting to create a failover cluster on 2 Hyper-V nodes in Windows Server 2008 R2, what edition of Windows would you prefer? Why? Talk about Hyper-V-based high availability. What's Quick Migration? What's Live Migration? Talk about downtime issues with Quick Migration vs. Live Migration. Talk about the steps needed to be taken in order to setup a Live Migration setup. What is CSV? Can you create a Live Migration setup without CSV? Explain. Mention a few methods for initiating a Live Migration movement of VMs between one host and another. ... How do you monitor the performance of your VMs? How do you know how much memory a specific VM uses? How do you know what's the I/O used on a Hyper-V host? How do you monitor the bandwidth used by a specific VM? Talk about SCVMM, SCOM, SCCM and Hyper-V. Talk about WMI and Hyper-V. When creating a new VM that'll run Windows Server 2008, what type of NIC would you create? Following the previous question, what type of NIC would you create for a WIN PE-based VM? Why? Migrating a Windows Server 2003 VM from Virtual Server 2005, what type of NIC would you need to use? Creating a new VM, what type of disk controller would you need to use for the VM's system disk? What are Integration Components? Talk about certain issues with hosting DCs virtually. What are "Enlightened Partitions"? What OSs are supported on Hyper-V? What types of backups can you use for VMs? Talk about performing backups of VMs and VSS.

How do you export a VM? Mention a couple of methods. Talk about domain membership considerations for Hyper-V hosts. Where can you manage Hyper-V hosts from? What is RSAT? How would you manage Hyper-V from a Windows 7-based machine? Talk about permission issues in regards of managing Hyper-V hosts. What is AZMAN?

What are the different virtual disk options in Hyper-V? When considering performance, what type 0f virtual disk would you use? What are pass-through disks? Talk about hot adding and hot removing disks in Hyper-V R2. What are VM snapshots? Talk about performance considerations and other "issues" with VM snapshots. What's the difference between applying, deleting and reverting to snapshots? Describe the process of creating a new VM from scratch. Where does Hyper-V place the files and settings for VMs, by default? How do you change that? What are synthetic drivers? What are emulated drivers? What is virtualization (in general)? What are the 4 major virtualization areas? Describe the major benefits of Server Virtualization. What is the difference between hosted virtualization and hypervisor-based virtualization? What's the idea behind Type 1 and Type 2 methods of virtualization? Talk briefly about the history of Microsoft-based virtualization products. What is Hyper-V? Name a few competitive products that can be compared (even roughly) with Hyper-V. What are the major differences between Hyper-V RTM and Hyper-V R2? Name some of the major differences. What are the hardware requirements for Hyper-V? How many logical CPUs does Hyper-V R2 support? How much RAM can be assigned to VMs in Hyper-V R2? What's Microsoft Hyper-V Server? Describe the process of installing Hyper-V from scratch on a brand new Dell R710 machine. ... What types of network connections does Hyper-V allow? When building a new Hyper-V host, what would your networking considerations be? Why is it important to leave one physical NIC for the host OS? Talk about MAC address ranges and potential issues with Hyper-V RTM. How was this solved in R2? What are the different virtual disk options in Hyper-V? When considering performance, what type 0f virtual disk would you use?

What are pass-through disks? Talk about hot adding and hot removing disks in Hyper-V R2. What are VM snapshots? Talk about performance considerations and other "issues" with VM snapshots. What's the difference between applying, deleting and reverting to snapshots?

VMWare Infrastructure What are the components of a VMWare Infrastructure ESX Server Host, Virtual Server Host, Virtual Infrastructure Client, Web browser, License Server, Database. What are the minimum hardware requirements to install Virtual Center Server Intel 2Ghz or higher or AMD x86 Processor 2 GB RAM (Minimum) 1 GB Free HDD space 10/100 Ethernet adaptor minimum A virtual Server configured with the minimum hardware configurations can support 20 concurrent clients,50 ESX Server hosts,and over 1000 virtual machines What are the requirements for Virtual Center VI WebAccess Supports browsers IE6 or higher,Mozilla 1.0.7 or higher What are the hardware minimum requirements for ESX Server 3.x? Minimum 2 processors 1500 Mhz Intel Xeon or later/AMD Opteron 1 or more Ethernet Controllers(for better security and performance,use different NICs for Service console and Virtual Machines What are the Performance Recommendations for VMWare ESX Servers? Having sufficient RAM for all the virtual machines.Along with that the ESX Server also should be equipped with sufficient amount of RAM,for running virtual machines concurrently.Dedicated Fast Ethernet Adaptors for virtual machines improve the throughput to the machines with high network traffic.For best performance all Data used by your virtual machine should reside in physical disks.For the best performance you can use VI client or VI Web Access to set up your VMFS3 partitioning.For best performance,use VI client or VI web access to set up your VMFS3 partitions than the ESX Server Installer.Using VI client or VI web Access ensures that the starting sections of the partitions are 64 K aligned,which improves storage performance. Faster processors improve ESX Server performance.For certain workloads even larger caches improve ESX Server performance. What is virtualization?What are its benefits? Virtualization is the creation of a virtual version of something say an, operating system,Server,storage,device or network devices etc The primary requirement for virtualization is cost savings.Other benefits are it allows multiple operating systems to be installed in the same server.Reduces the amount of hardware.Consolidates the Servers or potentially reduces the amount of physical(real estate) space that a company needs for its Servers or DataCenter

 What is a Hypervisor?
A hypervisor, also called a virtual machine manager, 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.

What is ESX Server

ESX Server is VMwares flagship enterprise server virtualization platform. It comes in two versions ESX Server and ESXi Server where the latter has no service console and is the thinnest version available. ESX Server has many optional features like VMotion and VMHA (both discussed below) and some built-in features like the VMFS file system. Most end users purchase VMware ESX Server with some set of optional features in a package called VMware Infrastructure. ESX Server is managed by the VMware Infrastructure Client. Its centralized management platform is called Virtual Center.

What is Hyper-V
Hyper-V is Microsofts flagship enterprise server virtualization platform. Hyper-V is a feature of Windows Server 2008 and it is required to be run on system with a 64-bit CPU. Its Hypervisor is about 100k, the Hyper-V role is about 100Mb, and Windows Server 2008, fully installed is multiple GB. The centralized management platform for Hyper-V is System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

What is the difference between ESX and GSX

With VMware Workstation and GSX Server, the software sits on top of a host operating system such as Windows or Linux. With ESX Server, the software runs directly on the system's hardware, eliminating the need to install a base OS. In fact, ESX has its own OS. The software basically runs on its own Linux kernel,and Linux is quite beneficial to know when working with the product, although it's not an absolute necessity.

What is the hardware version currently in ESX4 Version 7 What is VMWare Workstation
VMware Workstation uses virtual machine technology that is designed mostly for the power user. It allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single PC. The operating systems that can run under a VMware virtual machine can include Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, Novell Netware, and Linux.

What are the file Extensions in VMWare Infrastructure VMName.log This file keeps a track of the VMWare Workstation activity. Used for troubleshooting in case of a problem. This file is stored in the directory that holds the .vmx file of the virtual machine. VMName.nvram File that holds the state of the virtual machine BIOS

VMName.vmdk

*File that stores the contents of the virtual machine HDD drive.A virtual disk is made up of one or more .vmdk files . If you have specified that the virtual disk should be split into 2GB chunks, the
number of .vmdk files depends on the size of the virtual disk. As data is added to a virtual disk, the .vmdk files grow in size, to a maximum of 2GB each. (If you specify that all space should be allocated when you create the disk, these files start at the maximum size and do not grow.) Almost all of a .vmdk file's content is the virtual machine's data, with a small portion allotted to virtual machine overhead.If the virtual machine is connected directly to a physical disk, rather than to a virtual disk, the .vmdk file stores information about the partitions the virtual machine is allowed to access.Earlier VMware products used the extension .dsk for virtual disk files. *These files are the actual hard disk of the virtual machine itself, and tend to be the largest file within the folder. You can consider the size of this file to be roughly equivalent to the size of either the disk itself (if you've chosen to use pre-allocated disks) or the size of the data currently stored on that disk (if you use growable disks). <diskname>-<###>.vmdk This is a redo-log file, created automatically when a virtual machine has one or more snapshots. This file stores changes made to a virtual disk while the virtual machine is running. There may be more than one such file. The ### indicates a unique suffix added automatically by VMware Workstation to avoid duplicate file names.

VMName.vmsd

This is a centralized file for storing information and metadata about snapshots. .vmsn <vmname>-Snapshot.vmsn

This is the snapshot state file, which stores the running state of a virtual machine at the time you take that snapshot. <vmname>-Snapshot<###>.vmsn.This is the file which stores the state of a snapshot

VMName.vmss

This is the suspended state file, which stores the state of a suspended virtual machine.Some earlier VMware products used the extension .std for suspended state files

VMName.vmtm
This is the configuration file containing team data.

VMName.vmx

This is the primary configuration file, which stores settings chosen in the New Virtual Machine Wizard or virtual machine settings editor. If you created the virtual machine under an earlier version of VMware Workstation on a Linux host, this file may have a .cfg extension. With typically one VMX file per folder, this file holds the configuration information for the virtual machine in a text format. Unlike almost all the other files you'll see, these files can be edited using any text editing program, a process that is actually required for some functionality that is not exposed in the GUI.

VMName.vmxf

This is a supplemental configuration file for virtual machines that are in a team. Note that the .vmxf file remains if a virtual machine is removed from the team.

 VMName.VMEM These files, which contain a backup of the VMs paging file, are typically very small or nonexistent when the virtual machine is powered off, but grow immediately to the size of configured RAM when the machine is powered on.

Difference between .vmss,.vmsn and .vmsd files

VMSN:When snapshots are created for a virtual machine, these files are created to host the state of the virtual machine. The VMSN file stores the running state of the machine, what you could consider the "delta" between the VMDK at the point of the snapshot and what has been processed up until the present time. The VMSD stores information and metadata about the snapshot itself. If you've suspended the state of your machine, this file(VMSS) contains the suspended state of that machine. These files typically only appear when virtual machines have been suspended. What are a host, guest, and virtual machine? A host system (host operating system) would be the primary & first installed operating system. If you are using a bare metal Virtualization platform like Hyper-V or ESX, there really isnt a host operating system besides the Hypervisor. If you are using a Type-2 Hypervisor like VMware Server or Virtual Server, the host operating system is whatever operating system those applications are installed into.A guest system (guest operating system) is a virtual guest or virtual machine (VM) that is installed under the host operating system.The guests are the VMs that you run in your virtualization platform.Some admins also call the host & guest the parent and child. What products are available for Server Virtualization?

Bare Metal Hypervisor / Native / Type 1: VMware ESX Server Microsoft Hyper-V Citrix/Xen Server Hosted in an OS / Type 2: VMware Server Microsoft Virtual Server Parallels Server What products are available for Desktop Virtualization? Host in an OS / Type 2 / intended for workstations: VMware Workstation Microsoft Virtual PC Parallels Workstation VMware Fusion for Mac OS Parallels Desktop for Mac OS What is VDI and explain the steps for implementing a VDI using VMWare View 5.0

This is a VMware solution, not a product because it involves using Virtualization to provide virtual desktops to your users. All of us are familiar with the concept of using VMware Server or VMware ESX to virtualize your server applications (like SQL server, print servers, or other dedicated servers). VDI takes this a step farther. Here are the steps to using VDI:

1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

Create a virtual machine on ESX Server Install a VDI Connection Broker - this Connection Broker is what determines which Remote Desktop Host a user is assigned or should be connected to. Here are some of the connection brokers available today: ChipPC Virtual Desktop Center Citrix Desktop Broker for Presentation Server Dunes Virtual Desktop Orchestrator (VD-O) and Virtual Service Orchestrator (VS-O) LeoStream Virtual Desktop Connection Broker Propero workSpace Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite (VAS) Install a desktop operating system on that VM, such as Windows XP or Windows Vista Install desktop applications on the VM Allow remote access to that virtual desktop system over the network using any number of possible remote control options

What is the difference between Hyper-V and Virtual Server? Like the difference between ESX Server and VMware Server, Hyper-V and Virtual server have similar differences. Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor where Virtual Server is a type 2 hypervisor. Virtual Server requires that you first host a Windows operating system to load it.Hyper-V is meant to be a higher performance commercial virtualization platform with a centralized management platform and 3rd party add-ons. Virtual Server, on the other hand, is a free virtualization platform meant for the desktop or for small-scale server virtualization solutions. Difference between emulation, native virtualization, and paravirtualization Emulation is where software is used to simulate hardware for a guest operating system to run in. This has been used in the past but is difficult to do and offers low performance. Native virtualization (or full virtualization) is where a type-2 hypervisor is used to partially allow access to the hardware and partially to simulate hardware in order to allow you to load a full operating system. This is used by emulation packages like VMware Server, Workstation, Virtual PC, and Virtual Server. Paravirtualization is where the guest operating systems run on the hypervisor, allowing for higher performance and efficiency. For more technical information and videos on this topic, visit VMwares Technology Preview for Transparent Virtualization. Examples of paravirtualization are Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX Server. 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 arent aware of where the data really is. Storage virtualization is sometimes described as abstracting the logical storage from the physical storage.