Tag Archives: VSAN

2VB-601 Exam Study Guide for VSAN Specialist

Certifications, VSAN Specialist 2017,

As promised, here’s my 2VB-601 Exam Study Guide to achieve the VSAN Specialist 2017 badge.  Hope this helps!

Section 1- Storage Fundamentals

Objective 1.1 – Identify storage device characteristics

Objective 1.2 – Identify storage performance factors

Section 2 – VSAN Fundamentals

Objective 2.1 – Provide a high-level description of vSAN

Objective 2.2 – Describe vSAN requirements

Objective 2.3 – Understand how vSAN stores and protects data

Objective 2.4 – Describe vSAN space efficiency features

Section 3 – vSAN Configuration

Objective 3.1 – Identify physical network requirements

Objective 3.2 – Configure vSAN networking

Objective 3.3 – Configure a vSAN cluster

Objective 3.4 – Create and manage disk groups

Objective 3.5 – Validate a vSAN configuration

Section 4 – vSAN Policies and Virtual Machines

Objective 4.1 – Explain how storage policies work

Objective 4.2 – Create and manage storage policies

Objective 4.3 – Explain how storage policies are applied to virtual machines

Objective 4.4 – Check storage policy compliance

Objective 4.5 – Describe vsanSparse snapshots

Section 5 – Managing and Operating vSAN

Objective 5.1 – Configure vSAN encryption

Objective 5.2 – Understand various failure events and how vSAN responds

Objective 5.3 – Describe maintenance mode options

Objective 5.4 – Manage hardware replacement

Objective 5.5 – Describe iSCSI Target service

Section 6 – Stretched Clusters and Two-Node Clusters

Objective 6.1 – Describe a stretched cluster architecture

Objective 6.2 – Create a stretched cluster

Objective 6.3 – Understand data placement in a stretched cluster

Objective 6.4 – Describe the two-node cluster architecture

Section 7 – Monitoring and Troubleshooting vSAN

Objective 7.1 – Understand hardware failure scenarios

Objective 7.2 – Interpret vSAN Health in the vSphere Web Client

Objective 7.3 – Access performance information in the UI and using CLI

Objective 7.4 – Access capacity management information

Section 8 – Interoperability with vSphere Features

Objective 8.1 – Identify vSphere features that work with vSAN

Objective 8.2 – Understand vSAN compatibility with SRM

Objective 8.3 – Describe 3rd-party solution integration with vSAN

Objective 8.4 – Understand vSAN compatibility with Horizon

Section 9 – Designing a vSAN Deployment

Objective 9.1 – Understand vSAN design considerations

Objective 9.2 – Understand vSAN cache tier sizing

Objective 9.3 – Design a vSAN cluster

Objective 9.4 – Identify vSAN design and sizing tools

I hope my 2VB-601 Exam Study Guide helps anyone else out there prepare for the exam successfully!

2VB-601 – Objective 1.1 – Identify storage device characteristics

Certifications, VSAN,

Here are my notes for 2VB-601.  These notes I took to help me prepare for the exam as I went through the Deploy and Manage VSAN course, and through the recommended documentation.  Often, if I already knew the info, I didn’t necessarily put it in my notes.

Hope these help!

  • Lifespans of SSD drives
  • SLC
  • 100,000 writes
  • MLC
  • 3000-10000 writes
  • TLC
  • 1000 writes
  • eMLC
  • 20,000-30,000 writes
  • NVMe
  • Specification developed specifically for SSDs, more parallelism, better performance
  • 3D Cross Point
  • PCIe NVMe cards
  • Improved even more on performance
  • HDDs
  • Slower but higher capacity than SSDs
  • 15K, 10K, 7.2K RPM drives, higher = better latency

Return to 2VB-601 Exam Guide.

VMware VSAN Specialist 2VB-601 Exam Review

Certifications, Storage, ,

On Friday, I sat the VMware VSAN Specialist 2VB-601 Exam.  I’ll be deploying more VSAN soon, so I used this recently released 2VB-601 exam as a guide to thoroughly learn the product.  Passing 2VB-601 along with a VCP6 version of a VMware certification grants you the VMware VSAN Specialist 2017 badge.  This isn’t a full certification, but it acknowledges candidates with VSAN knowledge and skills.

2VB-601 Exam Format

The 2VB-601 exam consists of 60 multiple choice questions, and you have 105 minutes to complete the exam.  It is very comparable to VMware VCP exams as far as format goes.  If you’ve taken VCP exams before, you certainly know the drill here.  The top score for the exam is 500, and passing is 300, just like VCP exams.

2VB-601 Exam Resources

There aren’t a ton of affordable learning resources out there for this exam as far as books and what not go unfortunately.  However, if you follow the exam guide and read the documents provided in VMware’s study guide, along with hands on experience, you can certainly pass 2VB-601.  I also highly recommend the VMware hands on labs pertaining to VSAN.  You could also build your own lab using EvalExperience included with VMUG Advantage.

VSAN 6.6 Deploy and Manage training isn’t necessary, but I did attend it to fulfill a partner requirement.  If you’re a partner and need to do the same, this will definitely help.

2VB-601 Exam Experience

The 2VB-601 exam is very straight forward.  VMware VCP exams are notorious for sometimes asking rote memorization type questions, such as the exact word for word options for configuration choices.  I did not find that to be the case generally speaking with this exam.  Most questions are fair and are generally more conceptual in nature.  You do need to know what needs to be done or what happens in various scenarios.  I also generally didn’t find myself wondering to which exam objective questions were related, like I often do on VCP exams for more questions than I’d like.  Virtually every question I felt was fair game on.

With that said, the exam I found wasn’t nearly as difficult as every other VCP exam I’ve taken, which are numerous at this point.  If you look over the exam guide and feel you know them, have hands on experience with VSAN, I would recommend reading over the substantial documents in the guide prior to sitting the exam.  Otherwise, you should be in good shape.

I passed it on my first attempt with a 456, which is the highest I’ve ever gotten on any VMware exam.  I finished the exam with 45 minutes to spare, so time won’t be an issue.  I found the questions mostly fell in the category of “you know it or you don’t”.

I’ll be posting resources to help study for the exam for those of you who wish to take the exam.

Hope this helps!