VMware Certified Professional - Data Center Virtualization (VCP-DCV) Practice Exam

What condition would cause an NFS datastore to report a capacity of 0 bytes?

1. The NFS server is down.

2. The datastore is mounted as Read/Write.

3. The datastore is mounted as Read-Only.

4. The datastore was configured incorrectly.

The correct answer is: The NFS server is down.

When an NFS datastore reports a capacity of 0 bytes, it typically indicates an issue with the connectivity to the NFS server or the server itself. If the NFS server is down, the ESXi host is unable to communicate with it to retrieve any information regarding the datastore's storage capacity. As a result, the datastore appears to have 0 bytes available, as the host does not receive the necessary metadata and status updates it requires from the NFS server. This situation often arises during maintenance events or unexpected server failures where the NFS mounts become unavailable due to the server being inoperable. This directly impacts the ability of ESXi to interact with the datastore, leading to the misleading indication of zero capacity. In contrast, the conditions where the datastore is mounted as Read/Write or Read-Only do not affect the reporting of capacity; these represent access permissions rather than connectivity or availability issues. Similarly, while an incorrectly configured datastore could lead to operational problems, it would not necessarily result in a 0-byte capacity report unless it also involved an inability to access the server itself. Therefore, the condition that directly correlates to the observed capacity is indeed when the NFS server is down.