VMware vSphere 5.1 Boot Camp

Course Number:

N/A

Audience:

System architects, security specialists, operators, performance and capacity analysts, backup administrators, business continuity specialists and storage administrators
Course Duration:
5 days

Prerequisites:

Attendees should have user, operator or administrator experience on common operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX, etc. Experience installing, configuring and managing operating systems, storage systems and or networks is useful but not required. We assume that all attendees have a basic familiarity with PC server hardware, disk partitioning, IP addressing, O/S installation, networking, etc.

Course Objectives:
  • Explain the many significant benefits of virtualization
  • Install ESXi Server according to best practices
  • Configure and manage local storage
  • Create virtual, distributed virtual, and virtual to physical LAN segments
  • Understand and use shared SAN storage including Fibre SAN, iSCSI SAN
  • Define and use file share (NAS) datastores
  • Install, configure Single Sign On services and vSphere Inventory Services
  • Install, configure and administer VMware vCenter for Windows
  • Create virtual machines, install operating systems and applications
  • Configure and use hotplug hardware including hot-add vCPUs and Memory
  • Add and grow virtual disks including system disks and secondary volumes
  • Rapidly deployment of VMs using golden-master templates
  • Create clones – one-time copies of virtual machine
  • Perform VM cold migrations, hot migrations and Storage VMotion
  • Configure, manage, monitor and secure users and groups
  • Understand the benefits and trade offs of network, SAN,
  • Deploy and use VMware Data Protection to back up and recover VMs
  • Create and manage load balanced clusters
  • Enable, configure and use Distributed Power Management to reduce electrical power by soft powering off unneeded ESXi servers
  • Understand, create and manage high availability clusters to protect against VM service loss caused by ESXi server failures
  • Configure VMs for zero unplanned downtime by deploying vSphere Fault Tolerance
  • Monitor and tune both ESXi and virtual machine performance
  • Patch and update ESXi servers using vCenter Update Manager
  • Understand how VMware and third party products, including operating systems, are impacted by virtualization
  • Create, administer, back up and recover vNetwork Distributed Switches
  • Troubleshoot common problems
Course Outline:
  • Virtualization Infrastructure Overview
    • Virtualization explained
    • How VMware virtualization compares to traditional PC deployments
    • Common pain points in PC Server management
    • How virtualization effectively addresses common IT issues
    • VMware vSphere software products

 

  • How to Install, Configure ESXi 5.1 Installable
    • Understanding ESXi
    • Selecting, validating and preparing your server
    • Storage controllers, disks and partitions
    • Software installation and best practices
    • Joining ESXi to a Domain
    • First look at the VMware vSphere Client

 

  • Virtual and Physical Networking
    • vNetwork standard and distributed virtual Switches
    • Virtual Switches, Ports and Port Groups
    • Creating VMkernel ports
    • Creating, sizing and customizing Virtual Switches

 

  • NAS Shared Storage
    • Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
    • Shared Storage options
    • NFS Overview
    • Configuring ESX to use NFS Shares
    • Troubleshooting NFS connections

 

  • Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines
    • VM virtual hardware, options and limits
    • Sizing and creating a new VM
    • Assigning, modifying and removing Virtual Hardware
    • Working with a VM’s BIOS
    • VMware remote console applications
    • Installing an OS into a VM
    • Driver installation and customization

 

  • vCenter Server and the Next Generation Client
    • The need for Identity Source management
    • Installing and configuring Single Sign On (SSO)
    • Connecting to Active Directory and other identity sources
    • vCenter feature overview and components
    • VMware Licensing
    • Registering vCenter with SSO
    • Organizing vCenter’s inventory views
    • Importing ESX hosts into vCenter management
    • Installing and Using the vSphere Next Generation vSphere Client (NGC)

 

  • VM Rapid Deployment using Templates, Clones
    • Templates – Virtual Machine Golden Master images
    • Creating, modifying, updating and working with Templates
    • Patching, and refreshing Templates
    • Cloning, one time copies of VMs
    • Best practices for cloning and templating
    • Adding and resizing virtual disks

 

  • Advanced Virtual Machines
    • Enabling and using VM Hotplug in virtual hardware
    • CPU and Memory hot plug
    • Virtual NIC hot plug
    • Customizing Virtual CPUs for optimal performance
    • Enabling 3D hardware/software Video for desktop VMs

 

  • ESXi and vCenter Permission Model
    • VMware Security model
    • Configuring local users and groups
    • Managing local permissions
    • vCenter security model
    • Local, Domain and Active Directory users and groups
    • How permissions are applied

 

  • Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage
    • Fibre SAN overview
    • Identifying and using Fibre Host Bus Adapters
    • Scanning and Rescanning Fibre SANs
    • iSCSI overview
    • Virtual and physical iSCSI adapters
    • Connecting to iSCSI storage and scanning and rescanning iSCSI SANS
    • Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices

 

  • Raw Device Maps
    • Connecting VMs directly to SAN LUNs
    • Physical vs. Virtual Raw Device Maps
    • Impact of vMotion, Storage vMotion on RDMs

 

  • VMware File System (VMFS)
    • Unique file system properties of VMFS
    • Creating and manage VMFS capacity with LUN spanning, LUN expansion
    • Native and 3rd party Multipathing with Fibre and iSCSI SANs
    • VMFS performance considerations

 

  • Resource Management and Resource Pools
    • How ESX delivers resources to VMs
    • Shares, Reservations and Limits
    • CPU resource scheduling
    • Memory resource scheduling
    • Resource Pools

 

  • ESX and vCenter Alarms
    • Alarm categories and definitions
    • Creating custom alarms and actions
    • Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them

 

  • Host Profiles
    • Using Host Profiles to capture an ESXi host configuration
    • Perform configuration compliance scans
    • Remediating out of compliance configuration issues
    • Rapid ESXi host deployment/configuration with Host Profiles

 

  • Consolidation with vCenter Converter Standalone
    • vCenter Converter overview
    • Converting physical machines, virtual machines and OS Images
    • Cold migrations of physical machines to virtual machines
    • Hot migrations of physical machines to virtual machines

 

  • Back Up, Recovery with VMware Data Protection
    • Pros and cons of traditional back up strategies
    • Backing up VMs with VMware Data Protection
    • Backing and restoring your ESXi server configuration
    • Third party VM back up solutions

 

  • VM Hot and Cold Migration, Storage VMotion
    • Cold Migrations to new ESX hosts, datastores
    • Hot Migrations with VMotion
    • VMotion explanation, requirements, dependencies and troubleshooting
    • Storage VMotion for hot VM disk migrations

 

  • Load Balancing w. DRS Clusters
    • Delegated resource management with Resource Pools
    • Resource balanced clusters with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
    • DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
    • Per-VM cluster policy overrides

 

  • DRS Power Management
    • Understanding the role of Power Management
    • Configuring individual ESXi hosts to enable soft power-off
    • Testing vCenter power-off/power-on of ESXi hosts
    • DRS Power Management settings

 

  • Storage I/O Control and Storage DRS
    • Storage I/O scheduling policies
    • Enabling Storage I/O control to implement share based storage access
    • Creating DRS Storage Clusters
    • Tuning DRS Storage Clusters to balance out I/O loads and LUN capacity

 

  • Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters
    • High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
    • VMware High Availability clusters
    • VMware Fault Tolerance

 

  • HA Fault Tolerance
    • Delivering zero unplanned VM downtime with faulFault Tolerance overview, features and limitations
    • Configuration, monitoring and recovery
    • FT ESXi hosts and network compatibility requirements
    • Creating and administering FT VMs

 

  • Patch Management with VMware Update Manager
    • Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
    • Establishing a patch baseline
    • Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

 

  • Advanced Virtual Networking
    • Understanding, creating and administering vNetwork Distributed Switches
    • Migrating Standard vSwitch configurations to dvSwitches
    • Backing up and recovering dvSwitches
    • Troubleshooting and repairing dvSwitches
    • vSwitch Security
    • Traffic Shaping
    • NIC Teaming strategies – Originating Port, MAC Hash, IP Hash, NIC Load and LACP

 

  • Managing Scalability and Performance
    • VMkernel CPU and memory resource management mechanisms
    • Tuning VM storage I/O performance
    • Identifying and resolving resource contention
    • Monitoring VM and ESX host performance
    • Performance and capacity planning strategies

 

  • Final Thoughts
    • Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
    • Determining which workloads to consolidate
    • Other considerations

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