VCP-DCV vSphere Performance and Scaling Practice Question
Which THREE vSphere features directly contribute to performance and scaling of virtualized workloads? (Select THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
VCP-DCV often tests the distinction between availability features (HA, FT) and performance/scaling features (vMotion, DRS, SIOC) — candidates may incorrectly include HA or FT because they are prominent vSphere capabilities, but they do not directly improve performance or scaling.
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
✓
vSphere vMotion
vSphere vMotion (A) is correct because it enables live migration of running VMs between hosts with no downtime, which supports performance and scaling by allowing workload redistribution and maintenance without service interruption. Storage I/O Control (B) is correct because it enforces per-VM or per-datastore I/O shares and limits during congestion, directly managing storage performance and preventing noisy-neighbor effects in scaled environments. vSphere DRS (C) is correct because it continuously balances CPU and memory load across hosts in a cluster using vMotion, directly improving performance and enabling horizontal scaling. Fault Tolerance (D) and vSphere HA (E) are not correct here because they primarily provide availability and rapid recovery from host failures, not direct performance or scaling optimization of virtualized workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
vSphere vMotion
Why this is correct
vSphere vMotion enables live migration of running workloads between hosts, supporting load balancing across a cluster without downtime. This directly satisfies the scaling constraint by allowing distributed resource scheduler to redistribute virtual machines, preventing host contention and maintaining performance as demand shifts across the virtualized environment.
- ✓
Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
Why this is correct
Storage I/O Control enforces per-datastore IOPS limits and shares during congestion, preventing a single noisy workload from saturating shared storage. This directly sustains performance and scaling across many virtual machines, satisfying the stem's requirement for features that contribute to virtualised workload performance under contention.
- ✓
vSphere DRS
Why this is correct
vSphere DRS continuously balances compute load across hosts in a cluster by migrating VMs with vMotion, directly addressing the scaling constraint in the stem. It sustains performance as workload demand grows, rather than merely providing availability or storage efficiency like other options.
- ✗
vSphere Fault Tolerance
Why it's wrong here
Fault Tolerance maintains a live shadow copy for instant failover, consuming CPU and memory and halving consolidation ratios, so it protects availability rather than improving performance or scaling. It tempts because FT does enable larger workloads to run, but its purpose is continuous uptime, not throughput or scale-out.
- ✗
vSphere HA
Why it's wrong here
vSphere HA restarts VMs on surviving hosts after a failure, providing availability rather than performance or scaling. It tempts because HA permits larger clusters, yet it adds no CPU, memory or storage throughput; DRS and resource pools handle performance and scaling instead.
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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.