Key Concepts
Review these important points before starting the quiz
Cluster alignment reduces blast radius: Design clusters around workload domain purpose to minimize upgrade impact
Host commissioning establishes lifecycle control: Brings ESXi hosts under VCF management with validated configurations
Policy-based storage is key: Change storage behavior without touching workloads through vSAN storage policies
Avoid mixing storage architectures: Mixed vSAN ESA/OSA or external storage breaks validated lifecycle paths
ESA vs OSA choice: Driven by hardware capabilities, performance needs, and lifecycle goals
FTT controls resilience: Failure To Tolerate (FTT) in storage policies defines data availability across failures
Policy enforcement over manual management: Automation and consistency trump manual datastore operations
Configuration drift is the enemy: Manual overrides break policy-driven management and introduce supportability risk
Infrastructure as policy-driven services: VCF abstracts compute and storage as automated, policy-controlled services
Standardization enables scale: Consistent designs across the fleet enable predictable upgrades and support
Larger clusters = larger blast radius: Balance cluster size with operational risk during upgrades
Resource pools are not isolation: They provide resource management, not lifecycle or failure isolation
Mixed hardware increases risk: Different ESXi hardware generations complicate upgrades and support
Lifecycle consistency is paramount: Every design decision should consider upgrade paths and long-term supportability