CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1201)Virtualization and Cloud ComputingHard

A systems administrator is planning to implement a new virtualization cluster. The administrator needs to ensure that if a physical host fails, the virtual machines running on it can automatically restart on another available host without significant downtime. What feature of virtualization management platforms addresses this requirement?

  1. ADistributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
  2. BHigh Availability (HA)
  3. CStorage Area Network (SAN)
  4. DResource pooling
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B. High Availability (HA)

High Availability (HA) is a critical feature in virtualization clusters. It monitors the health of physical hosts and, in the event of a host failure, automatically restarts the affected virtual machines on another healthy host within the cluster. This minimizes downtime and ensures service continuity.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. DRS balances workloads across hosts but does not inherently provide automatic failover in case of a host crash.
  • C. A SAN provides shared storage for VMs but does not manage the automatic restart logic itself.
  • D. Resource pooling aggregates resources, but doesn't handle automatic failover.

High Availability (HA) in Virtualization

A feature in virtualization platforms that automatically detects physical host failures and restarts affected virtual machines on other healthy hosts within a cluster, minimizing downtime.

  • Monitors physical host health.
  • Automatically restarts VMs on failover.
  • Requires shared storage for VMs.

Memory trick: For 'HA'ppy uptime, 'HA've High Availability.

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