VMware HCI Master Specialist

The VMware Certified Master Specialist – HCI 2021 certification validates an earner's ability to deploy and manage a software-defined storage solution with VMware vSAN. Badge earners have an understanding of vSAN architecture, features and use cases, and interoperability with VMware vSphere.

The minimally qualified candidate will have achieved VCP-DCV and vSAN Specialist certification. Candidates should have 1 year of experience designing, configuring, managing, and upgrading VMware HCI environments. Candidates should be familiar with deployment and administration of VMs using Storage Policy-Based Management. Candidates should have intermediate knowledge of storage, storage hardware, monitoring, and remediation topics, as well as basic networking and security knowledge and should have completed the VMware vSAN: Deploy and Manage training.

Exam Sections:

Architecture and Technologies - There are no testable objectives for this

VMware Products and Solutions

• Configure vSphere replication (effects of storage policies)

• Deploy vRealize Operations with VSAN

Planning and Designing

• Define and demonstrate vSAN design considerations (policies; fault domains; disc groups; vmkernel traffic; VCG; networking etc.)

• Design a vSAN cluster (availability; capacity tier; failure to tolerate; etc.)

• Use vSAN design and sizing tools (sizing cache tier for workload; no of nodes; VM sizing; Live Optics; HCl Bench etc.)

Installing, Configuring, and Setup

• Configure and validate a vSAN configuration (networking [emphasize this]; vSAN Health; Cluster Quickstart; fault domains)

• Create and manage disk groups

• Configure and validate vSAN services (iSCSI Target service, VSAN Encryption; vSAN fault domains; Health Service; dedupe/compression etc.)

• Configure vSAN stretched cluster and 2-node configurations

• Configure Cloud Native storage (CNS) with appropriate policies (Ensure container volumes are mapped to correct policies, datastore and are compliant)

Performance-tuning, Optimization, Upgrades

• Determine upgrade requirements

• Apply patches using vSphere Update Manager (VUM)

• Upgrade an HCl environment using VUM (AirGap environments)

• Add and remove hosts from a cluster (capacity: compute, storage etc.)

• Evaluate use case and apply appropriate maintenance mode option.

• Create, expand, reconfigure, and remove disk groups

• Manage firmware and driver versions using vSAN Health, VUM, and Compatibility Guide

• Set VUM baseline preferences

Troubleshooting and Repairing

• Identify failure scenarios (firmware and hardware compatibility; ESXi host failure; disk, hardware, network failures; vVSAN failure recovery; DDH etc)

• Interpret vSAN Health warnings (most common: [use Humbug to define]; disk rebalance:

  congestion; hardware compatibility; object states etc)

• Determine vSAN Health using the vSphere Host Client, ESXCLI

• Evaluate performance information in the Ul and using vsantop

• Manage hardware replacement (device failure; disk replacement; replace a host)

• Monitor resync impact

• Identify and remove unassociated objects to reclaim capacity

• Resolve capacity issues using storage policies (Proper way to return to a healthy capacity How to

  free capacity when an out-of-capacity situation, Capacity behavior best practices vs version specific)

• Resolve object compliance issues

• Configure/setup Network Diagnostics mode/option

Administrative and Operational Tasks

• Describe vSAN data placement changes (stretched clusters, fault domains)

• Evaluate vSAN performance metrics (IOPS, congestion, latency, throughput, vsantop, resync)

• Describe effects of maintenance mode options (Ul and CLI, new features and functionality)

• Monitor storage policy compliance

• Interpret Health Check (actioning alerts, resolving alerts, configuring on-line Health; evaluate vSAN

  object health.)

• Identify the impact of policy changes (capacity, fault tolerance, IOPS limit)

• Identify cluster configuration inconsistency and remediate through health check (Initiate

  remediation workflow from Health check)