What this exam actually proves

The 2V0-21.19 Professional vSphere 6.7 Exam 2019 validates that you can install, configure, administer, and troubleshoot a VMware vSphere 6.7 environment. This is not a conceptual cloud exam. It is an operations-heavy test built around ESXi, vCenter Server, virtual networking, storage, resource management, availability, and basic troubleshooting.

Expect questions that assume you have been in the vSphere Client, not just read about it. You need to recognize the right setting, the right workflow, and the effect of changing it.

What you should expect:

Vendor-specific wording. VMware likes exact product names and feature behavior.
Administration focus. A lot of the exam is about what you do in a real vSphere deployment.
Scenario questions. Not deep architecture essays, but practical situations: a host cannot see storage, a VM should restart after failure, a migration is blocked, a template is needed, permissions are wrong.
Version specificity. Study vSphere 6.7 behavior, not whatever changed later in 7.x or 8.x.

If you already manage vSphere daily, this exam is fair. If your experience is limited to spinning up a few VMs, the gap is bigger than it looks.

Map your study time to the real vSphere 6.7 blueprint

For this exam, I would organize study in the same order VMware expects you to understand the platform:

Architecture and products — know what each component does.
Installation and configuration — build hosts and vCenter correctly.
Networking and storage — this is where many candidates lose easy points.
VM lifecycle and resource management — day-to-day administration.
Availability and data protection — HA, FT, snapshots, templates, cloning.
Troubleshooting and permissions — practical admin work.

The highest-return areas are usually:

Installing/configuring ESXi and vCenter Server Appliance
Managing clusters, hosts, and VMs
vSphere networking
vSphere storage
Availability features like HA, DRS, and vMotion

Do not over-invest in fringe features at the expense of core tasks. You are more likely to be tested on how to configure a standard switch port group, what storage types ESXi supports, or what conditions vMotion requires than on obscure edge cases.

A practical split for most candidates:

25% installation, architecture, and initial configuration
25% networking and storage
25% VM, host, cluster, and resource administration
15% availability, migrations, and protection features
10% troubleshooting, permissions, and monitoring

Foundation first: ESXi, vCenter Server Appliance, and core architecture

Before you touch HA or DRS, be crisp on the building blocks.

Know the components and what they do

You should be able to explain the role of:

ESXi host
vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
Platform Services Controller in the 6.7 era and how embedded/external deployment concepts matter historically
vSphere Client
VMFS, NFS, and basic vSAN positioning
Datacenter, cluster, host, resource pool, folder, template, content library

Installation topics that are commonly tested

Be comfortable with:

Installing ESXi 6.7
Configuring management networking from the DCUI
Setting hostname, DNS, NTP, and lockdown mode
Deploying VCSA using the installer workflow
Understanding embedded services deployment in vSphere 6.7
Adding hosts to vCenter
Creating datacenters and clusters
Applying licenses

Configuration details you should not confuse

Candidates often blur these lines:

Direct host management vs management through vCenter
Host profiles vs normal host configuration
Template vs clone vs content library item
Cold migration vs vMotion vs Storage vMotion
Standard switch capabilities vs distributed switch capabilities

What to practice in a lab

Build this from scratch at least once:

Install one or two ESXi hosts.
Deploy VCSA.
Create a datacenter and cluster.
Add hosts.
Configure DNS and NTP correctly.
Create a VM, clone it, convert to template, and deploy from template.
Create roles and permissions for a delegated admin.

If you cannot do those tasks without looking everything up, you are not ready.

High-value facts to memorize accurately

vCenter Server is required for vMotion, DRS, and HA cluster management.
ESXi can run VMs standalone, but many enterprise features depend on vCenter.
Templates are not powered-on VMs; they are master images used for deployment.
Content Libraries help standardize and distribute VM templates, OVF templates, and other files.

Use VMware's own terminology. The exam rewards precision.

Networking and storage: the domain where details matter

This is the section I tell people not to rush. VMware asks a lot of questions that look simple until two similar options appear.

vSphere networking you need to own

You should know how vSphere Standard Switches (VSS) work and where vSphere Distributed Switches (VDS) fit.

Study these topics carefully:

VMkernel adapters and what services they carry
- Management
- vMotion
- Provisioning
- Fault Tolerance logging
- vSAN traffic
Port groups
Uplink assignments
NIC teaming and failover
VLANs
Security policies
- Promiscuous mode
- MAC address changes
- Forged transmits
Traffic shaping
Load balancing policies

Be able to distinguish when a service requires a VMkernel port versus a VM network port group.

Questions VMware likes in this area

Which network service needs a VMkernel adapter?
What happens if vMotion networking is missing or misconfigured?
Which setting controls failover order for uplinks?
Which switch type is needed for certain centralized capabilities?

Storage topics that show up repeatedly

You need working knowledge of:

VMFS datastores
NFS datastores
iSCSI basics
Fibre Channel basics
Raw Device Mapping (RDM) at a high level
Datastore mounting and rescanning
Storage policies at a conceptual level
Thin vs thick provisioning
Storage vMotion requirements and use cases
Multipathing basics

Do not just memorize acronyms. Understand the admin workflow.

Know the differences that trip people up

VMFS is a clustered file system used by ESXi hosts.
NFS datastores are file-based and mounted from a NAS source.
iSCSI and FC are block storage transports.
Storage vMotion moves a VM's files between datastores while powered on, assuming requirements are met.
Thin provisioning allocates storage on demand; thick reserves more upfront depending on format.

What to test in your lab

Create a standard switch with separate port groups for management and VM traffic.
Add a VMkernel adapter for vMotion.
Configure NIC teaming.
Mount an NFS datastore if your lab supports it.
Present iSCSI storage using a simulator like TrueNAS or a SAN/NAS appliance.
Perform a Storage vMotion.
Check datastore connectivity and rescan adapters.

Troubleshooting patterns worth learning

When storage or networking questions appear, the answer is often hidden in one missing prerequisite:

DNS resolution incorrect
VMkernel adapter missing
Required service not enabled on the VMkernel NIC
Datastore not visible to all hosts in a cluster
Uplink or VLAN mismatch
Host storage adapters not rescanned

Those are not glamorous topics. They are exam points.

Running the environment: VMs, clusters, migrations, and resource controls

This is the operational center of the exam. You need to know how the environment behaves once it is built.

Virtual machine administration

Be fluent with common VM tasks:

Create, modify, and remove VMs
Install VMware Tools
Adjust CPU, memory, disk, and network settings
Manage snapshots properly
Clone a VM
Convert a VM to a template
Deploy from template
Use customization specifications at a basic level

Snapshot questions are common

Know what snapshots are for and what they are not for.

Good for short-term rollback during patching or application changes
Not a backup strategy
Long-lived snapshots can hurt performance and consume datastore space

Clusters, DRS, and resource pools

You should understand:

What a cluster provides in vCenter
DRS purpose and basic behavior
Resource pools and when to use them
Shares, reservations, and limits for CPU and memory
How resource settings affect contention

Candidates often memorize definitions but cannot apply them. Be able to answer practical questions like:

Which setting guarantees a minimum amount of memory?
Which setting controls relative priority during contention?
Which setting caps usage even if resources are available?

The answers:

Reservation = guaranteed minimum
Shares = relative priority under contention
Limit = upper cap

Migration technologies

This exam expects you to clearly separate migration types.

Know these cold

vMotion = live migration of compute between hosts
Storage vMotion = live migration of VM files between datastores
Cold migration = powered-off VM moved between hosts/datastores
Cross-host and cross-datastore moves may combine compute and storage migration if supported

Prerequisites matter

Study requirements for successful vMotion:

vCenter management
Compatible networking
Shared storage in common scenarios, unless using supported migration methods
Proper VMkernel configuration for vMotion
CPU compatibility considerations

Host lifecycle and patching

At a minimum, understand:

Update Manager / vSphere Update Manager behavior in the 6.7 timeframe
Baselines and remediation concepts
Host maintenance mode
Why DRS helps evacuation before maintenance

Monitoring and alarms

Know where admins look when something is wrong:

Performance charts
Events and tasks
Alarms
Host and VM summary health indicators

The exam will not make you a performance specialist, but it does expect you to know where to start.

Availability, protection, and the features VMware expects you to choose correctly

This is where VMware tests whether you understand the purpose of each feature, not just its name.

vSphere HA

You need to know what High Availability does and what it does not do.

Monitors hosts in a cluster
Restarts VMs on surviving hosts after a host failure
Requires shared understanding of cluster resources and proper configuration
Does not preserve in-memory execution state the way FT does

Study:

HA prerequisites
Admission control concepts
Isolation response at a high level
Host failure vs guest OS failure distinctions

Fault Tolerance

Know the use case:

FT provides continuous availability for supported VMs by maintaining a secondary copy
It is for very specific workloads and has stricter requirements than HA
It is not the default answer to every availability question

A typical exam trick: if the question says the VM must continue running with minimal interruption after host failure, FT may be the better choice than HA. If it says the VM can restart on another host after failure, that is usually HA.

DRS and HA together

Know the division of labor:

DRS balances workloads and placement
HA restarts workloads after host failure

People mix them up under pressure.

Backup-adjacent concepts the exam may touch

This exam is not a backup certification, but you should know:

Snapshots are not backups
Clones and templates are deployment tools, not recovery strategies
Replication and backup products exist outside core vSphere, but the exam focus remains on platform features

vSAN basics

You may see vSAN at a foundational level. For this exam, understand what it is and where it fits:

Hyperconverged storage integrated with vSphere
Uses local host resources to create shared datastore capacity
Requires specific networking and storage design considerations

Do not spend disproportionate time on advanced vSAN design unless your blueprint source explicitly emphasizes it. For 2V0-21.19, core vSphere administration is still the center.

Permissions, security, and troubleshooting without overcomplicating it

VMware tests basic operational security and delegated administration more than deep security engineering.

Permissions model

Know these pieces:

Users and groups
Roles
Privileges
Permissions assigned at inventory objects
Propagation behavior

You should be able to answer who can do what if a permission is assigned at the datacenter, cluster, or VM folder level.

Host security and access controls

Study:

Lockdown mode purpose
Root account handling and basic security hygiene
Certificates at a conceptual level
Firewall and service management on ESXi
Secure management access principles

Troubleshooting categories to review

VMware questions often ask for the first or best action. That means you need a basic sequence.

If a VM will not power on

Check:

Datastore capacity
Host resource availability
File locks or inaccessible files
Permission issues
Snapshot or configuration problems

If vMotion fails

Check:

VMkernel vMotion network exists and is enabled
Hosts can reach each other on the correct network/VLAN
Shared datastore visibility if required
CPU compatibility/EVC considerations
Licensing and vCenter management

If a host cannot see storage

Check:

Physical connectivity
VLAN/IP settings for IP storage
iSCSI initiator configuration
Rescan adapters
LUN masking/zoning basics for SAN environments

If HA does not behave as expected

Check:

Cluster HA enabled
Shared networking and datastore assumptions
Admission control/resource availability
Host communication and management network health

This is enough depth for the exam. Do not disappear into advanced log forensics unless that is your day job.

A realistic prep plan based on your actual vSphere experience

The right timeline depends almost entirely on whether you have hands-on vSphere experience.

If you already administer vSphere regularly: 2 to 4 weeks

You likely need focused review, not a full rebuild.

Week 1

Review official exam guide/objectives
List weak areas: storage, networking, HA/DRS, permissions
Lab core tasks you do less often, especially VCSA deployment, vMotion networking, resource controls, templates/content libraries

Week 2

Drill networking and storage
Review migration prerequisites
Revisit HA vs FT vs DRS use cases
Take a practice test and analyze misses by domain

Week 3

Perform one full lab run from install to cluster operations
Review VMware docs on features you answered incorrectly
Memorize terms and prerequisites precisely

Week 4 if needed

Light review only
Focus on weak objective areas, not random reading

If you have some virtualization experience but limited VMware admin time: 5 to 7 weeks

This is the most common group.

Weeks 1-2: ESXi, VCSA, inventory objects, licensing, templates, permissions
Weeks 3-4: networking and storage labs
Week 5: clusters, DRS, HA, vMotion, Storage vMotion
Week 6: troubleshooting scenarios and practice questions
Week 7: final review and targeted repetition

If you are new to vSphere: 8 to 10 weeks

Do not try to cram this in two weekends.

Spend the first half building platform familiarity
Spend the second half repeating admin workflows until they feel routine
Budget extra time for networking and storage because that is where new candidates struggle most

Weekly time commitment

A realistic target:

6-8 hours/week if you already work with vSphere
8-12 hours/week if you need to build hands-on skills

The lab matters more than passive reading. For this exam, I would rather see you spend 3 hours in a lab than 6 hours reading summaries.

Resources worth using for vmware-2v0-2119

Use a short list of reliable resources and go deep.

Official VMware resources

Start here.

VMware Exam Guide for 2V0-21.19 — your source of truth for objectives
vSphere 6.7 Documentation on docs.vmware.com / techdocs.vmware.com
- vSphere Installation and Setup
- vCenter Server and Host Management
- vSphere Networking
- vSphere Storage
- vSphere Availability
- vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
- vSphere Security
VMware Hands-on Labs (HOL)
- Look for vSphere 6.7 administration labs
- Excellent for guided practice on HA, DRS, vMotion, VDS, and storage tasks

Courses that align well

VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.7] — the most directly relevant official training path
If available through your employer or partner access, VMware education content for vSphere 6.7 is worth prioritizing over generic virtualization courses

Books I would actually recommend

Mastering VMware vSphere 6.7 by Nick Marshall, Scott Lowe, Forbes Guthrie — strong for administration depth
VMware vSphere 6.7 Clustering Deep Dive by Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman, Niels Hagoort — especially useful for HA/DRS understanding, though deeper than the exam requires

Use the clustering book selectively. Great resource, but do not let it pull you too far into design minutiae.

Practice questions

You mentioned 123 practice questions on Truekia. Use them as a diagnostic tool, not as your primary learning method.

Best way to use practice questions:

Take one timed set early to expose weak domains
Do not memorize answers
For every miss, trace it back to an official VMware doc section
Re-test after lab work, not before

Home lab options

For this exam, a small lab is enough if it lets you practice the workflows.

Possible setups:

Workstation/Fusion nested lab with ESXi and VCSA
A small physical lab with supported or lab-tolerant hardware
Shared corporate lab if you have access
VMware Hands-on Labs when local resources are limited

Minimum useful lab outcomes:

Deploy ESXi and VCSA
Configure networking and VMkernel adapters
Add shared storage or simulate it
Create a cluster and test HA/DRS basics
Perform vMotion and Storage vMotion
Work with templates, snapshots, roles, and alarms

How to sit the VMware exam without giving away easy points

A few VMware-specific habits help.

Read for the exact feature being asked

VMware questions often include two answers that are both good admin ideas, but only one matches the named feature.

Examples:

Restart after host failure points to HA
Balance workloads automatically points to DRS
Move a running VM between hosts points to vMotion
Move VM files between datastores points to Storage vMotion

Watch for prerequisite language

If a question mentions a migration or cluster feature, ask yourself:

Is vCenter implied or required?
Is there a VMkernel adapter for the service?
Is shared storage available where needed?
Are we talking about powered-on or powered-off VMs?

Eliminate answers that are true in general but wrong for 6.7 specifics

This matters if you have worked with newer versions. Keep your mental model anchored to vSphere 6.7.

Manage time simply

Answer direct factual questions fast
Mark long scenario questions if needed
Do not spend three minutes debating two storage options on the first pass

Last-day review checklist

Before the exam, make sure you can explain these without hesitation:

ESXi vs vCenter roles
VSS vs VDS basics
VMkernel services
VMFS vs NFS vs iSCSI/FC basics
vMotion vs Storage vMotion vs cold migration
HA vs FT vs DRS
Reservations vs limits vs shares
Template vs clone vs snapshot
Role, privilege, permission, propagation

If those are automatic for you, the exam becomes much more manageable.

This certification rewards solid platform administration, not trick memorization. Study the objectives, build the workflows, and keep your answers tied to how vSphere 6.7 actually behaves.