An administrator is tasked to deploy a new eight-node VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) cluster. What are three minimum requirements to accomplish this? (Choose three.)

Question

Options

• A10GbE network interfaces
• B256GB Memory
• C25GbE network interfaces
• DPCIe flash device (NVMe)
• ESAS solid-state disk (SSD)
• F128GB Memory

• A
  5% (2)
• B
  5% (2)
• C
  88% (37)
• E
  2% (1)

Explanation

VMware vSAN ESA (introduced in vSAN 8.0) represents a significant architectural leap requiring modern hardware. 25GbE networking (C) is the minimum - ESA's performance demands exceed what 10GbE can sustain, making 10GbE (A) insufficient and a requirement of the older OSA architecture. NVMe/PCIe flash (D) is mandatory because ESA was purpose-built around the low-latency characteristics of NVMe; SAS SSDs (E) lack the performance profile ESA's single-tier storage engine requires, and are an OSA-era device choice. 128GB RAM (F) is the per-host minimum for ESA due to its in-memory metadata and caching model; 256GB (B) exceeds the minimum and would disqualify it as a minimum requirement.

Memory tip: Think "ESA = Elevated Speed Architecture" - everything is bumped up from OSA: network jumps from 10G → 25G, spinning/SAS media is gone in favor of NVMe, and RAM starts at 128GB. If an answer sounds like the old vSAN OSA (10GbE, SAS SSD, lower RAM), it's wrong for ESA.

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