VCP-DCV vSphere Architecture, Products and Solutions Practice Question
A cloud operations team is evaluating vSphere editions for a new data center. The team needs features that allow live migration of running workloads between hosts and automated placement of workloads across a cluster based on resource usage. Which two vSphere capabilities provide these requirements? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating any cluster feature as a placement or migration mechanism, when only vMotion and DRS perform those specific functions.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
vMotion provides live migration of running VMs between hosts, and DRS provides automated placement and balancing of workloads across a cluster based on resource usage. Together they meet both stated requirements. Storage I/O Control, Network I/O Control, and HA address storage performance, network performance, and failure recovery respectively, not live migration or automated placement.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
vSphere High Availability (HA)
Why it's wrong here
vSphere HA restarts VMs on surviving hosts after a host failure, which is recovery rather than live migration. It does not move running VMs without downtime and does not balance workloads based on resource usage. Although valuable for availability, it does not satisfy either requirement described by the operations team.
- ✓
vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Why this is correct
DRS monitors resource usage across hosts in a cluster and generates or applies placement recommendations to balance workloads. It satisfies the requirement for automated placement based on resource usage, and in fully automated mode it uses vMotion to act on those recommendations. DRS operates at the cluster level and respects affinity and anti-affinity rules.
- ✗
vSphere Network I/O Control
Why it's wrong here
Network I/O Control provides quality of service for traffic types on a vSphere Distributed Switch by allocating bandwidth shares, reservations, and limits. It influences network performance during contention but does not perform live migration or automated workload placement. It is therefore unrelated to the two requirements in the scenario.
- ✓
vSphere vMotion
Why this is correct
vSphere vMotion moves a running VM from one ESXi host to another with no downtime by transferring memory state and device state. This directly satisfies the requirement for live migration of running workloads between hosts. It is a core vSphere capability and does not depend on shared storage when using storage vMotion or enhanced vMotion compatibility configurations.
- ✗
vSphere Storage I/O Control
Why it's wrong here
Storage I/O Control manages storage congestion by throttling I/O to datastores when latency exceeds configured thresholds. It does not migrate running VMs between hosts and does not place workloads across a cluster. Its scope is storage performance fairness, so it does not meet either of the stated requirements.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official VMware exam blueprint
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