Cohesity Data Protection Associate Exam
Questions and Verified Answers Latest
Update
1. What is Cohesity DataPlatform? Answer: Cohesity DataPlatform is a web-
scale, hyperconverged secondary storage solution that consolidates backup,
archive, file services, object storage, analytics, and copy data management onto
a single platform.
2. What are the main components of a Cohesity cluster? Answer: The main
components include Cohesity nodes (physical or virtual), Cohesity
DataPlatform software, distributed file system (SpanFS), and the web-based
management interface.
3. What is SpanFS in Cohesity? Answer: SpanFS is Cohesity's distributed file
system that provides scale-out storage, deduplication, compression, and erasure
coding across all nodes in the cluster.
4. What are the different Cohesity node types? Answer: Physical nodes
(various models like C2600, C4600, C6600), Virtual Edition (VE) nodes that
run on VMware or other hypervisors, and cloud-based nodes.
5. What is the minimum number of nodes required for a Cohesity cluster?
Answer: A minimum of 3 nodes is required to form a Cohesity cluster for data
protection and high availability.
6. What is Cohesity's approach to data deduplication? Answer: Cohesity
performs global deduplication across the entire cluster using variable-length
deduplication with fingerprinting, eliminating duplicate data blocks cluster-
wide.
7. What compression algorithms does Cohesity use? Answer: Cohesity uses
LZ4 compression algorithm for real-time compression during data ingestion,
providing a balance between compression ratio and performance.
,8. What is erasure coding in Cohesity? Answer: Erasure coding is a data
protection method that breaks data into fragments, encodes them with redundant
data pieces, and stores them across different nodes to provide fault tolerance.
9. What are Protection Policies in Cohesity? Answer: Protection Policies
define backup schedules, retention settings, replication targets, and archival
rules for protecting data sources.
10. What is a Protection Job in Cohesity? Answer: A Protection Job is the
execution of a Protection Policy on specific data sources, defining what data to
protect and how to protect it.
11. What types of data sources can Cohesity protect? Answer: VMware
VMs, Hyper-V VMs, physical servers, databases (SQL Server, Oracle, SAP
HANA), NAS shares, cloud workloads, and Kubernetes applications.
12. What is Cohesity's RPO and RTO capabilities? Answer: Cohesity can
achieve RPOs as low as 15 minutes with frequent snapshots and RTOs of
minutes to hours depending on data size and recovery method.
13. What is the difference between local snapshots and remote replication?
Answer: Local snapshots are point-in-time copies stored on the same cluster,
while remote replication copies data to another Cohesity cluster for disaster
recovery.
14. What is Cohesity's instant recovery feature? Answer: Instant recovery
allows VMs to be powered on directly from Cohesity storage without first
restoring data to production storage, minimizing RTO.
15. What is the Cohesity Marketplace? Answer: The Cohesity Marketplace is
a platform for third-party applications and integrations that extend Cohesity's
capabilities for analytics, compliance, and data management.
16. What is SmartFiles in Cohesity? Answer: SmartFiles is Cohesity's scale-
out NAS solution that provides file services with global deduplication,
compression, and multi-protocol support.
17. What protocols does Cohesity SmartFiles support? Answer: SmartFiles
supports NFS (v3 and v4), SMB/CIFS (v2 and v3), and S3 protocols for file and
object access.
18. What is DataLock in Cohesity? Answer: DataLock is Cohesity's
immutable backup feature that prevents backup data from being modified or
deleted, providing compliance and ransomware protection.
, 19. What is the difference between DataLock and Legal Hold? Answer:
DataLock provides immutability for a specified retention period, while Legal
Hold indefinitely preserves data until explicitly released, typically for litigation
purposes.
20. What is Cohesity's CloudTier feature? Answer: CloudTier automatically
moves older backup data to cloud storage (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) based
on policies, reducing on-premises storage costs.
21. What is the Cohesity Agent? Answer: The Cohesity Agent is software
installed on physical or virtual machines to enable file-level backup, bare metal
recovery, and application-aware protection.
22. What is agentless backup in Cohesity? Answer: Agentless backup
protects VMs using hypervisor APIs (VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V)
without installing software on individual VMs.
23. What is the difference between full and incremental backups in
Cohesity? Answer: Full backups capture all data, while incremental backups
only capture changes since the last backup. Cohesity uses incremental forever
with synthetic fulls.
24. What is synthetic full backup? Answer: Synthetic full backup creates a
full backup image by combining previous incremental backups without re-
reading all source data, improving efficiency.
25. What is Cohesity's approach to encryption? Answer: Cohesity provides
encryption at rest using AES-256 and encryption in flight using TLS/SSL for
data protection during transmission and storage.
26. What is the Cohesity REST API used for? Answer: The REST API
enables programmatic management of Cohesity clusters, automation of backup
operations, and integration with third-party tools.
27. What is Cohesity's role-based access control (RBAC)? Answer: RBAC
provides granular permissions to users and groups, controlling access to
clusters, protection jobs, recovery operations, and administrative functions.
28. What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in Cohesity? Answer: MFA
adds an extra security layer requiring users to provide additional verification
(SMS, email, authenticator app) beyond username/password.
29. What is the Cohesity Dashboard? Answer: The Dashboard provides a
centralized view of cluster health, protection status, storage usage, alerts, and
performance metrics across the environment.
Questions and Verified Answers Latest
Update
1. What is Cohesity DataPlatform? Answer: Cohesity DataPlatform is a web-
scale, hyperconverged secondary storage solution that consolidates backup,
archive, file services, object storage, analytics, and copy data management onto
a single platform.
2. What are the main components of a Cohesity cluster? Answer: The main
components include Cohesity nodes (physical or virtual), Cohesity
DataPlatform software, distributed file system (SpanFS), and the web-based
management interface.
3. What is SpanFS in Cohesity? Answer: SpanFS is Cohesity's distributed file
system that provides scale-out storage, deduplication, compression, and erasure
coding across all nodes in the cluster.
4. What are the different Cohesity node types? Answer: Physical nodes
(various models like C2600, C4600, C6600), Virtual Edition (VE) nodes that
run on VMware or other hypervisors, and cloud-based nodes.
5. What is the minimum number of nodes required for a Cohesity cluster?
Answer: A minimum of 3 nodes is required to form a Cohesity cluster for data
protection and high availability.
6. What is Cohesity's approach to data deduplication? Answer: Cohesity
performs global deduplication across the entire cluster using variable-length
deduplication with fingerprinting, eliminating duplicate data blocks cluster-
wide.
7. What compression algorithms does Cohesity use? Answer: Cohesity uses
LZ4 compression algorithm for real-time compression during data ingestion,
providing a balance between compression ratio and performance.
,8. What is erasure coding in Cohesity? Answer: Erasure coding is a data
protection method that breaks data into fragments, encodes them with redundant
data pieces, and stores them across different nodes to provide fault tolerance.
9. What are Protection Policies in Cohesity? Answer: Protection Policies
define backup schedules, retention settings, replication targets, and archival
rules for protecting data sources.
10. What is a Protection Job in Cohesity? Answer: A Protection Job is the
execution of a Protection Policy on specific data sources, defining what data to
protect and how to protect it.
11. What types of data sources can Cohesity protect? Answer: VMware
VMs, Hyper-V VMs, physical servers, databases (SQL Server, Oracle, SAP
HANA), NAS shares, cloud workloads, and Kubernetes applications.
12. What is Cohesity's RPO and RTO capabilities? Answer: Cohesity can
achieve RPOs as low as 15 minutes with frequent snapshots and RTOs of
minutes to hours depending on data size and recovery method.
13. What is the difference between local snapshots and remote replication?
Answer: Local snapshots are point-in-time copies stored on the same cluster,
while remote replication copies data to another Cohesity cluster for disaster
recovery.
14. What is Cohesity's instant recovery feature? Answer: Instant recovery
allows VMs to be powered on directly from Cohesity storage without first
restoring data to production storage, minimizing RTO.
15. What is the Cohesity Marketplace? Answer: The Cohesity Marketplace is
a platform for third-party applications and integrations that extend Cohesity's
capabilities for analytics, compliance, and data management.
16. What is SmartFiles in Cohesity? Answer: SmartFiles is Cohesity's scale-
out NAS solution that provides file services with global deduplication,
compression, and multi-protocol support.
17. What protocols does Cohesity SmartFiles support? Answer: SmartFiles
supports NFS (v3 and v4), SMB/CIFS (v2 and v3), and S3 protocols for file and
object access.
18. What is DataLock in Cohesity? Answer: DataLock is Cohesity's
immutable backup feature that prevents backup data from being modified or
deleted, providing compliance and ransomware protection.
, 19. What is the difference between DataLock and Legal Hold? Answer:
DataLock provides immutability for a specified retention period, while Legal
Hold indefinitely preserves data until explicitly released, typically for litigation
purposes.
20. What is Cohesity's CloudTier feature? Answer: CloudTier automatically
moves older backup data to cloud storage (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) based
on policies, reducing on-premises storage costs.
21. What is the Cohesity Agent? Answer: The Cohesity Agent is software
installed on physical or virtual machines to enable file-level backup, bare metal
recovery, and application-aware protection.
22. What is agentless backup in Cohesity? Answer: Agentless backup
protects VMs using hypervisor APIs (VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V)
without installing software on individual VMs.
23. What is the difference between full and incremental backups in
Cohesity? Answer: Full backups capture all data, while incremental backups
only capture changes since the last backup. Cohesity uses incremental forever
with synthetic fulls.
24. What is synthetic full backup? Answer: Synthetic full backup creates a
full backup image by combining previous incremental backups without re-
reading all source data, improving efficiency.
25. What is Cohesity's approach to encryption? Answer: Cohesity provides
encryption at rest using AES-256 and encryption in flight using TLS/SSL for
data protection during transmission and storage.
26. What is the Cohesity REST API used for? Answer: The REST API
enables programmatic management of Cohesity clusters, automation of backup
operations, and integration with third-party tools.
27. What is Cohesity's role-based access control (RBAC)? Answer: RBAC
provides granular permissions to users and groups, controlling access to
clusters, protection jobs, recovery operations, and administrative functions.
28. What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in Cohesity? Answer: MFA
adds an extra security layer requiring users to provide additional verification
(SMS, email, authenticator app) beyond username/password.
29. What is the Cohesity Dashboard? Answer: The Dashboard provides a
centralized view of cluster health, protection status, storage usage, alerts, and
performance metrics across the environment.
