VCP-DCV vSAN Storage Policies Practice Question
A managed service provider manages multiple vSphere environments for various customers. One customer's cluster consists of 6 ESXi hosts (3 pairs of identical hardware) and uses vSAN as shared storage. The cluster runs over 100 VMs with varying workloads. The administrator notices that a specific host (Host-C) is using significantly more storage capacity than its peers, even though it hosts a similar number of VMs. The administrator suspects the vSAN storage policies are not configured optimally. Upon investigation, the administrator finds that all VMs use the default vSAN policy with 'RAID-0 (Striping) - No failure tolerance' and 'Object space reservation' set to 100%. Which change would most evenly distribute storage consumption across all hosts?
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
✓
Set 'Number of failures to tolerate' to 1 (mirroring)
The current default policy ('RAID-0 (Striping) - No failure tolerance') with Object space reservation at 100% implies a failure tolerance of 0, meaning each VM's objects are stored on a single host. This can lead to uneven capacity distribution if many VMs are placed on Host-C. Setting 'Number of failures to tolerate' to 1 (Option D) enables RAID-1 mirroring, which creates two copies of each object on different hosts. This forces the data to be distributed across at least two hosts, balancing storage consumption. Option A (increasing reservation) does not affect placement. Option B (RAID-5/6) reduces overhead but still uses a single copy per stripe, not ensuring distribution. Option C (deduplication/compression) reduces total capacity used but does not change where data is stored; the uneven distribution remains.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase 'Object space reservation' to 200%?
Why it's wrong here
Space reservation does not affect replication or distribution.
- ✗
Change the policy to 'RAID-5/6 (Erasure Coding)' to reduce capacity overhead
Why it's wrong here
Erasure coding reduces capacity overhead but may not even distribution if failures to tolerate are set incorrectly.
- ✗
Enable deduplication and compression on the vSAN datastore
Why it's wrong here
Dedup and compression reduce overall capacity but do not directly distribute existing data evenly.
- ✓
Set 'Number of failures to tolerate' to 1 (mirroring)
Why this is correct
Mirroring creates a second replica on another host, distributing capacity more evenly.
Quick reference
RAID Level Comparison
| RAID Level | Min Disks | Fault Tolerance | Read | Write | Usable Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RAID 0 | 2 | None | Excellent | Excellent | 100% |
| RAID 1 | 2 | 1 disk | Good | Moderate | 50% |
| RAID 5 | 3 | 1 disk | Good | Moderate | 67–94% |
| RAID 6 | 4 | 2 disks | Good | Lower | 50–88% |
| RAID 10 | 4 | 1 disk per mirror | Excellent | Good | 50% |
RAID is not a backup strategy — it protects against disk failure but not against accidental deletion, ransomware, or site-level events.
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JA
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.