VCP-DCV vSphere Performance and Scaling Practice Question
A vSphere administrator notices that a VM is performing poorly on a host with multiple NUMA nodes. The VM has 16 vCPUs and 64 GB of memory, but the host has only 32 GB of memory per NUMA node. Which action would MOST LIKELY improve performance?
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
✓
Enable vNUMA in the VM settings.
The VM's memory (64 GB) exceeds the per-NUMA-node memory capacity (32 GB), so the VM becomes a 'wide' VM that spans multiple NUMA nodes. Enabling vNUMA exposes this virtual NUMA topology to the guest OS, allowing it to optimize memory locality and improve performance. Increasing memory reservation does not address the NUMA issue, reducing vCPUs may help but is not the best solution, and migrating to a host with more memory per node is unnecessary if vNUMA is enabled.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable vNUMA in the VM settings.
Why this is correct
vNUMA exposes the NUMA topology, allowing the guest OS to optimize memory access across nodes.
- ✗
Increase the memory reservation to 64 GB.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing memory reservation does not address NUMA locality.
- ✗
Reduce the number of vCPUs to 8.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing vCPUs may reduce contention but not the fundamental NUMA issue.
- ✗
Migrate the VM to a host with more memory per NUMA node.
Why it's wrong here
While possible, enabling vNUMA is a more direct solution and can be done without migration.
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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.