VCP-DCV Configure and Manage vSphere Networking Practice Question
A VM on a vSphere Distributed Switch is experiencing intermittent connectivity drops. The administrator checks the vDS health check and sees no errors. The physical switch logs show no issues. The VM is on a port group with VLAN 200. The administrator runs a ping from the VM to the gateway and notices packet loss. What should the administrator investigate next?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume intermittent connectivity must be a VM firewall or DNS issue, overlooking the NIC teaming failover order as a primary cause of packet loss on a vDS when physical and vDS health checks show no errors.
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
✓
Review the NIC teaming failover order and ensure active uplinks are up.
Intermittent connectivity drops on a VM connected to a vDS, despite no errors on the vDS health check or physical switch logs, often point to a NIC teaming misconfiguration. If the active uplinks are not properly set or one uplink is down, the VM traffic may fail over to a standby or unused uplink, causing packet loss. Verifying the teaming failover order and ensuring all active uplinks are operational directly addresses this common cause of intermittent drops.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Verify the VMkernel port configuration
Why it's wrong here
VMkernel ports carry vMotion, iSCSI and management traffic, not the VM's guest traffic on VLAN 200, so their configuration cannot cause this VM's drops. VMkernel settings are the right focus when host-level services such as vMotion or storage lose connectivity.
- ✗
Check the VM's firewall settings
Why it's wrong here
A guest firewall would block traffic consistently rather than intermittently, and it does not explain packet loss to the gateway itself. Guest firewall rules are the correct suspect when all traffic from a VM is refused while other VMs on the same port group communicate normally.
- ✗
Check DNS resolution for the gateway
Why it's wrong here
DNS resolves names to addresses; the administrator is already pinging the gateway by IP, so name resolution cannot cause packet loss. Checking DNS is correct when connectivity works to IP addresses but fails for hostnames, which is not the symptom described here.
- ✓
Review the NIC teaming failover order and ensure active uplinks are up.
Why this is correct
Intermittent loss with clean health checks and switch logs points to uplink pathing. If the active uplink in the teaming failover order is down, traffic drops until failover, matching the observed packet loss on VLAN 200.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on VCP-DCV
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A network administrator notices that all traffic from two VMs connected to the same standard switch port group is going through the same physical uplink, causing congestion. The teaming policy is set to Route based on originating virtual port. What change should the administrator make to distribute traffic more evenly?
easy- ✓ A.Change teaming policy to Route based on IP hash.
- B.Increase the number of uplinks to 4.
- C.Enable LACP on the standard switch.
- D.Change the load balancing policy to Explicit failover order.
Why A: Route based on originating virtual port assigns each VM's vNIC to an uplink based on its port ID on the vSwitch. Because a VM keeps the same port for its lifetime, all traffic from that VM is pinned to a single uplink — so two VMs on the same port group can hash to the same uplink and congest it. Route based on IP hash uses a hash of source and destination IP addresses to select the uplink, so traffic from the same VM to different destinations can be spread across multiple uplinks, improving distribution.
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.