Enabling Deduplication and Compression on an All-Flash vSAN Cluster

AE.

Sure, I'd be happy to provide a detailed explanation of the correct answers to this question from the VMware HCI Master Specialist exam.

The two statements that are true about enabling deduplication and compression on an All-Flash vSAN cluster with data are:

A. On-disk format version 3.0 or later is required to support deduplication and compression. B. This can be enabled through storage policies and does not require any data migration.

Let's take a closer look at each of these statements and why they are true.

A. On-disk format version 3.0 or later is required to support deduplication and compression. Deduplication and compression are advanced data services that are available in vSAN 6.5 and later versions. However, to enable these features, the on-disk format version of the vSAN datastore must be 3.0 or later. The on-disk format version refers to the data format that is used on the physical disks of the vSAN cluster. When you create a vSAN cluster, you choose an on-disk format version that determines the features and capabilities of the cluster. To enable deduplication and compression, you must have an on-disk format version of 3.0 or later. Therefore, this statement is true.

B. This can be enabled through storage policies and does not require any data migration. Enabling deduplication and compression on a vSAN cluster with data does not require any data migration. This is because vSAN uses a policy-based management system to manage the storage policies of virtual machines. You can create or modify a storage policy to enable deduplication and compression, and then apply that policy to virtual machines or virtual disks. Once the policy is applied, vSAN will automatically deduplicate and compress the data as it is written to the cluster. Therefore, this statement is also true.

Let's take a look at why the other answer options are incorrect:

C. Deduplication and Compression cannot be enabled on an existing vSAN datastore with data. This statement is incorrect because you can enable deduplication and compression on an existing vSAN datastore with data. You do not need to create a new datastore or migrate data to a new datastore to enable these features.

D. Move one host at a time to maintenance mode and enable deduplication and compression. This statement is also incorrect because you do not need to move hosts to maintenance mode to enable deduplication and compression. As mentioned earlier, these features can be enabled through storage policies, which can be applied to virtual machines or virtual disks without any downtime.

E. This requires data evacuation and disk format upgrade of all the disk groups. This statement is incorrect because you do not need to evacuate data or upgrade the disk format of all the disk groups to enable deduplication and compression. These features can be enabled through storage policies without requiring any data migration or disk format upgrades.

In summary, to enable deduplication and compression on an All-Flash vSAN cluster with data, you need an on-disk format version of 3.0 or later, and you can enable these features through storage policies without requiring any data migration or downtime.