VCP-DCV vSphere Performance and Scaling Practice Question
A company's vSphere environment experiences intermittent performance degradation on a critical virtual machine. The VM has 8 vCPUs allocated, and the host has 16 physical cores (2 sockets, 8 cores each). The VM is configured with Hyper-Threading enabled. Which action is most likely to improve performance without increasing resource allocation?
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
✓
Change the VM's CPU affinity to pin it to one socket
Pinning the VM to one socket reduces NUMA cross-socket latency, improving performance for the 8-vCPU VM. Option B is wrong because CPU hot-add does not improve performance; it allows adding CPUs later. Option C is wrong as memory reservation does not directly affect CPU performance. Option D is wrong because disabling Hyper-Threading generally reduces throughput.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Change the VM's CPU affinity to pin it to one socket
Why this is correct
Pinning to one socket ensures all vCPUs run on cores within the same physical CPU package, reducing NUMA cross-socket latency.
- ✗
Enable CPU hot-add for the VM
Why it's wrong here
CPU hot-add allows adding vCPUs while the VM is running, but does not improve current performance.
- ✗
Increase the VM's memory reservation
Why it's wrong here
Memory reservation guarantees physical memory but does not affect CPU scheduling or socket locality.
- ✗
Disable Hyper-Threading on the host
Why it's wrong here
Disabling Hyper-Threading reduces logical CPUs, potentially increasing ready time and decreasing overall throughput.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This VCP-DCV practice question is part of Courseiva's free VMware certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the VCP-DCV exam.