Introduction to LPIC-3 Virtualization and High Availability Exam

The LPI 304-200 Exam is challenging and thorough preparation is essential for success. This exam study guide is designed to help you prepare for the LPIC-3 certification exam. It contains a detailed list of the topics covered on the Professional exam, as well as a detailed list of preparation resources. These study guides for the LPI Virtualization and High Availability will help guide you through the study process for your certification.

304-200 LPI Virtualization and High Availability Exam Summary

• Exam Name: LPI Virtualization and High Availability
• Exam Code: 304-200
• Exam Price: $200 (USD)
• Duration: 90 mins
• Number of Questions: 60
• Passing Score: 500 / 800
• Schedule Exam: LPI Marketplace
• Sample Questions: LPI LPIC-3 Sample Questions
• Recommended Practice: LPI 304-200 Certification Practice Exam

Exam Syllabus: 304-200 LPIC-3 Virtualization and High Availability

1. Virtualization

Virtualization Concepts and Theory

Weight: 8

 

Description: Candidates should know and understand the general concepts, theory and terminology of Virtualization. This includes Xen, KVM and libvirt terminology.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Terminology

- Pros and Cons of Virtualization

- Variations of Virtual Machine Monitors

- Migration of Physical to Virtual Machines

- Migration of Virtual Machines between Host systems

- Cloud Computing

 

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

- Hypervisor

- Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM)

- Paravirtualization (PV)

- Container Virtualization

- Emulation and Simulation

- CPU flags

- /proc/cpuinfo

- Migration (P2V, V2V)

- IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

Xen

Weight: 9

 

Description: Candidates should be able to install, configure, maintain, migrate and troubleshoot Xen installations. The focus is on Xen version 4.x.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Xen architecture, networking and storage

- Xen configuration

- Xen utilities

- Troubleshooting Xen installations

- Basic knowledge of XAPI

- Awareness of XenStore

- Awareness of Xen Boot Parameters

- Awareness of the xm utility

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Domain0 (Dom0), DomainU (DomU)

- PV-DomU, HVM-DomU

- /etc/xen/

- xl

- xl.cfg

- xl.conf

- xe

- xentop

KVM

Weight: 9

 

Description: Candidates should be able to install, configure, maintain, migrate and troubleshoot KVM installations.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- KVM architecture, networking and storage

- KVM configuration

- KVM utilities

- Troubleshooting KVM installations

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Kernel modules: kvm, kvm-intel and kvm-amd

- /etc/kvm/

- /dev/kvm

- kvm

- KVM monitor

- qemu

- qemu-img

Other Virtualization Solutions

Weight: 3

 

Description: Candidates should have some basic knowledge and experience with alternatives to Xen and KVM.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Basic knowledge of OpenVZ and LXC

- Awareness of other virtualization technologies

- Basic knowledge of virtualization provisioning tools

 

Terms and Utilities:

- OpenVZ

- VirtualBox

- LXC

- docker

- packer

- vagrant

Libvirt and Related Tools

Weight: 5

 

Description: Candidates should have basic knowledge and experience with the libvirt library and commonly available tools.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- libvirt architecture, networking and storage

- Basic technical knowledge of libvirt and virsh

- Awareness of oVirt

 

Terms and Utilities:

- libvirtd

- /etc/libvirt/

- virsh

- oVirt

Cloud Management Tools

Weight: 2

 

Description: Candidates should have basic feature knowledge of commonly available cloud management tools.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Basic feature knowledge of OpenStack and CloudStack

- Awareness of Eucalyptus and OpenNebula

 

Terms and Utilities:

- OpenStack

- CloudStack

- Eucalyptus

- OpenNebula

 

High Availability Cluster Management

High Availability Concepts and Theory

Weight: 5

 

Description: Candidates should understand the properties and design approaches of high availability clusters.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Understand the most important cluster architectures

- Understand recovery and cluster reorganization mechanisms

- Design an appropriate cluster architecture for a given purpose

- Application aspects of high availability

- Operational considerations of high availability

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Active/Passive Cluster, Active/Active Cluster

- Failover Cluster, Load Balanced Cluster

- Shared-Nothing Cluster, Shared-Disk Cluster

- Cluster resources

- Cluster services

- Quorum

- Fencing

- Split brain

- Redundancy

- Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)

- Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)

- Service Level Agreement (SLA)

- Disaster Recovery

- Replication

- Session handling

Load Balanced Clusters

Weight: 6

 

Description: Candidates should know how to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot LVS. This includes the configuration and use of keepalived and ldirectord. Candidates should further be able to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot HAProxy.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Understanding of LVS / IPVS

- Basic knowledge of VRRP

- Configuration of keepalived

- Configuration of ldirectord

- Backend server network configuration

- Understanding of HAProxy

- Configuration of HAProxy

 

Terms and Utilities:

- ipvsadm

- syncd

- LVS Forwarding (NAT, Direct Routing, Tunneling, Local Node)

- connection scheduling algorithms

- keepalived configuration file

- ldirectord configuration file

- genhash

- HAProxy configuration file

- load balancing algorithms

- ACLs

Failover Clusters

Weight: 6

 

Description: Candidates should have experience in the installation, configuration, maintenance and troubleshooting of a Pacemaker cluster. This includes the use of Corosync. The focus is on Pacemaker 1.1 for Corosync 2.x.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Pacemaker architecture and components (CIB, CRMd, PEngine, LRMd, DC, STONITHd)

- Pacemaker cluster configuration

- Resource classes (OCF, LSB, Systemd, Upstart, Service, STONITH, Nagios)

- Resource rules and constraints (location, order, colocation)

- Advanced resource features (templates, groups, clone resources, multi-state resources)

- Pacemaker management using pcs

- Pacemaker management using crmsh

- Configuration and Management of corosync in conjunction with Pacemaker

- Awareness of other cluster engines (OpenAIS, Heartbeat, CMAN)

 

Terms and Utilities:

- pcs

- crm

- crm_mon

- crm_verify

- crm_simulate

- crm_shadow

- crm_resource

- crm_attribute

- crm_node

- crm_standby

- cibadmin

- corosync.conf

- authkey

- corosync-cfgtool

- corosync-cmapctl

- corosync-quorumtool

- stonith_admin

High Availability in Enterprise Linux Distributions

Weight: 1

 

Description: Candidates should be aware of how enterprise Linux distributions integrate High Availability technologies.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Basic knowledge of Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability Add-On

- Basic knowledge of SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Distribution specific configuration tools

- Integration of cluster engines, load balancers, storage technology, cluster filesystems, etc.

High Availability Cluster Storage

DRBD / cLVM

Weight: 3

 

Description: Candidates are expected to have the experience and knowledge to install, configure, maintain and troubleshoot DRBD devices. This includes integration with Pacemaker. DRBD configuration of version 8.4.x is covered. Candidates are further expected to be able to manage LVM configuration within a shared storage cluster.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Understanding of DRBD resources, states and replication modes

- Configuration of DRBD resources, networking, disks and devices

- Configuration of DRBD automatic recovery and error handling

- Management of DRBD using drbdadm

- Basic knowledge of drbdsetup and drbdmeta

- Integration of DRBD with Pacemaker

- cLVM

- Integration of cLVM with Pacemaker

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Protocol A, B and C

- Primary, Secondary

- Three-way replication

- drbd kernel module

- drbdadm

- drbdsetup

- drbdmeta

- /etc/drbd.conf

- /proc/drbd

- LVM2

- clvmd

- vgchange, vgs

Clustered File Systems

Weight: 3

 

Description: Candidates should know how to install, maintain and troubleshoot installations using GFS2 and OCFS2. This includes integration with Pacemaker as well as awareness of other clustered file systems available in a Linux environment.

 

Key Knowledge Areas:

- Understand the principles of cluster file systems

- Create, maintain and troubleshoot GFS2 file systems in a cluster

- Create, maintain and troubleshoot OCFS2 file systems in a cluster

- Integration of GFS2 and OCFS2 with Pacemaker

- Awareness of the O2CB cluster stack

- Awareness of other commonly used clustered file systems

 

Terms and Utilities:

- Distributed Lock Manager (DLM)

- mkfs.gfs2

- mount.gfs2

- fsck.gfs2

- gfs2_grow

- gfs2_edit

- gfs2_jadd

- mkfs.ocfs2

- mount.ocfs2

- fsck.ocfs2

- tunefs.ocfs2

- mounted.ocfs2

- o2 info

- o2 image

- CephFS

- GlusterFS

- AFS

LPI 304-200 Certification Sample Questions and Answers

To make you familiar with LPI Virtualization and High Availability (304-200) certification exam structure, we have prepared this sample question set. We suggest you to try our Sample Questions for LPIC-3 304 304-200 Certification to test your understanding of LPI 304-200process with real LPI certification exam environment.

 

304-200 LPI Virtualization and High Availability Sample Questions:-

01. When used with KVM, which of the following block device image formats support snapshots?

a) qcow

b) dmg

c) qcow2

d) qed

e) raw

 

02. Which of the following statements are true regarding IaaS computing instances?

(Choose TWO correct answers.)

a) Creation of new instances can be automated by using scripts or APIs and service interfaces.

b) The root file system of a computing instance is always persistent and can be accessed after the instance is destroyed.

c) Each and every user of an IaaS cloud has exactly one computing instance.

d) Once created, computing instances are seldom deleted in order to ensure the accessibility of the instance's data.

e) Instances may be created when needed and destroyed when they become obsolete.

 

03. How does the command to add a new resource to a Pacemaker cluster using crm begin?

a) crm manage cluster

b) crm configure resource

c) crm service add

d) crm configure primitive

e) crm resource new

 

04. In case one service in a Pacemaker cluster depends on another service running on the same node, which score should be assigned to the constraint describing that dependency?

a) -1

b) 0

c) 1

d) FORCE

e) INFINITY

 

05. Within the graphical output of a KVM virtual machine, which key sequence switches to the KVM monitor of the VM?

a) Ctrl-Alt-1

b) Ctrl-Alt-0

c) Ctrl-Alt-4

d) Ctrl-Alt-2

e) Ctrl-Alt-3

 

06. How can data be shared between several virtual machines running on the same Linux-based host system?

a) By mounting other VM's file systems from /dev/virt-disks/remote/.

b) By using a network file system or file transfer protocol.

c) By default, Linux-based virtualization products provide full access to the host system to all virtual machines.

d) By setting up a ramdisk in one virtual machine and mounting it using its UUID in the other VMs.

e) By attaching the same virtual hard disk to all virtual machines and activating EXT4 sharing extensions on it.

 

07. What is the usual way to gain command line access to computing instances in an IaaS cloud?

a) By providing a public SSH key to the cloud management system and using the matching private SSH key to log into the instances.

b) Usually computing instances are accessed through a web frontend and do not allow command line access.

c) By either telnet or SSH using the credentials of the cloud management system account with administrative privileges.

d) By using a telnet session with the credentials set and publicized by the creator of the computing instance's system image.

e) By using a VNC console which does not require authentication when it is invoked via the cloud management system.

 

08. When preparing a public machine image for the provisioning of new cloud computing instances, which of the following steps should be done?

(Choose TWO correct answers.)

a) Remove all default users and groups, including root and nobody.

b) Remove all configuration files from /etc/ that were not manually modified.

c) Remove all confidential data from the image.

d) Remove all remote login services (i.e. SSH) from the image.

e) Remove all private SSH keys from the image.

 

09. Which options to the xl command will deactivate a running Xen virtual machine?

(Choose TWO correct answers.)

a) destroy

b) remove

c) shutdown

d) stop

e) halt

 

10. Using Linux Virtual Server (LVS) without any additional tools provides which of the following features?

a) Balancing network connections across several backend servers.

b) Automatically taking over the services of failed nodes.

c) Restarting failed services on the backend servers.

d) Checking the integrity of services on backend servers.

e) Starting and stopping backend servers as needed.

 

Answers:-

Answer 1:- c

Answer 2:- a, e

Answer 3:- d

Answer 4:- e

Answer 5:- d

Answer 6:- b

Answer 7:- a

Answer 8:- c, e

Answer 9:- a, c

Answer 10:- a