VCP-DCV vSphere Architecture, Products and Solutions Practice Question
A vSphere administrator manages a cluster where several business-critical VMs must remain available even if an entire ESXi host fails. The administrator configures vSphere High Availability (HA) with host monitoring and admission control enabled, but the VMs are not configured with any restart priority. During a host failure, what is the default behavior for these VMs?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is believing HA needs a per-VM restart priority, when the cluster default applies whenever none is configured.
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
✓
The VMs are restarted on surviving hosts according to the cluster's default VM restart priority.
vSphere HA uses a cluster-level default restart priority when a VM has no individual setting. After detecting a host failure, the master host applies admission control and restarts the affected VMs on surviving hosts automatically. No per-VM priority, manual approval, or pre-failure vMotion is required for the VMs to be protected.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The VMs are not restarted because HA requires an explicit restart priority for every VM.
Why it's wrong here
vSphere HA does not require an explicit restart priority on each VM. If no per-VM priority is set, the cluster default is used. Requiring individual configuration for every VM would make HA impractical in large environments, and the product is designed to protect VMs by default once the cluster feature is enabled.
- ✓
The VMs are restarted on surviving hosts according to the cluster's default VM restart priority.
Why this is correct
When a VM does not have an individual restart priority, vSphere HA applies the cluster-level default restart priority, which is typically medium. After a host failure is detected, the master host coordinates restart of affected VMs on hosts that have sufficient resources, subject to admission control reservations. The VMs therefore still receive HA protection without per-VM priority settings.
- ✗
The VMs are restarted only after an administrator manually approves the restart in the vSphere Client.
Why it's wrong here
vSphere HA restarts affected VMs automatically once a host failure is confirmed and resources are available. Manual approval is not part of the HA restart workflow; that kind of gating is associated with other orchestration products. Requiring approval would extend downtime and defeat the purpose of automated host-failure recovery.
- ✗
The VMs are migrated with vMotion to surviving hosts before the failed host goes down.
Why it's wrong here
vMotion cannot run after a host has already failed, and HA responds to a failure that has occurred. vMotion is a proactive migration mechanism, not a recovery mechanism for an unplanned host outage. HA instead restarts the affected VMs on surviving hosts, which involves a brief interruption rather than a live migration.
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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
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.