RAID 6 is the most suitable because it offers dual parity, allowing the array to withstand the failure of two disks without data loss. This provides a high level of protection against pool failure, is more cost-effective in terms of raw capacity than RAID 10 (which requires 50% overhead), and is safer for critical data than RAID 5 (single parity) or RAID 0 (no redundancy).

A sustained drop in the read cache hit ratio directly points to an issue with the read cache’s effectiveness. The most common cause is insufficient cache memory allocated, meaning fewer frequently accessed data blocks can be held in fast memory, forcing more reads to go to the slower backend disks. While other issues can impact performance, they wouldn’t typically cause a sustained, specific drop in this metric.

Thin provisioning’s core advantage is storage overcommitment. It allows administrators to present a larger logical capacity to hosts than is physically available, allocating physical space only as the host actually writes data. This improves storage utilization and postpones capital expenditure. The other options describe data compression, erasure coding, and automated tiering, which are distinct technologies.

For iSCSI with path redundancy, a standard best practice is multipath I/O. This requires at least two independent network paths. Using two ports, each connected to a separate physical switch, eliminates a single point of failure (switch failure) and allows the host multipath driver to failover between paths. A single bond (Option B) provides link aggregation but not switch-level redundancy.

High I/O wait time on the host often indicates that I/O requests are queuing. A host-side HBA queue depth that is too low can be a primary culprit, as it artificially limits the number of concurrent I/Os the host can send to the storage, creating a bottleneck. Checking and adjusting host configuration (if applicable) is a logical first step before re-architecting storage-side elements like RAID level or port configuration.

For application-consistent snapshots (especially for databases), the application must be quiesced. Flushing filesystem buffers and placing the database in backup mode ensures that all pending transactions are written to disk and the database is in a known, consistent state before the snapshot pointer is created. This guarantees the snapshot data is valid for recovery. Taking a snapshot without this step results in a crash-consistent image.

SmartPartition is a performance management feature. It allows administrators to partition a storage pool’s resources (like disks and cache) into dedicated sections. By assigning a high-priority LUN to a partition, you can guarantee it receives a minimum level of IOPS and bandwidth, isolating it from “noisy neighbors” and ensuring consistent performance for critical applications.

The correct non-disruptive flow is to first perform the physical expansion on the storage array. Then, make the host OS aware of the new size (in vSphere, this is a storage rescan). Finally, expand the filesystem (VMFS) to utilize the new capacity. The operations must be performed in this order. Option C reverses the critical steps, which would fail.

RPO defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. In asynchronous HyperReplication, data is replicated in periodic cycles. Therefore, the RPO is directly determined by the synchronization interval (e.g., 5 minutes, 1 hour). If a failure occurs just before a sync, you could lose up to one cycle’s worth of data. Bandwidth and distance affect feasibility and performance but do not directly define the RPO value.

RAID 6 is the most suitable because it offers dual parity, allowing the array to withstand the failure of two disks without data loss. This provides a high level of protection against pool failure, is more cost-effective in terms of raw capacity than RAID 10 (which requires 50% overhead), and is safer for critical data than RAID 5 (single parity) or RAID 0 (no redundancy).0