VMware vSphere 5.5 with ESXi and vCenter

Course Number:

N/A

Audience:

This class is suitable for anyone who want to learn how to extract the maximum benefit from their investment in Virtual Infrastructure.
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 and administer VMware vCenter Server Appliance
  • Create virtual machines, install operating systems and applications
  • 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 Recovery to back up and recover VMs
  • Create and manage load balanced clusters
  • Understand, create and manage high availability clusters to protect against VM service loss caused by ESXi server failures
  • Monitor and tune both ESXi and virtual machine performance
  • Patch and update ESXi servers using vCenter Update Manager
  • Replicate critical VMs to protect against data loss and service loss
  • Understand how VMware and third party products, including operating systems, are impacted by virtualization
  • Troubleshoot common problems
Course Outline:

HoL – Indicates a hands-on lab at the end of the chapter

  • 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 5.5 Installable (HoL)
    • Understanding ESXi
    • 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 (HoL)
    • vNetwork standard and distributed virtual Switches
    • Virtual Switches, Ports and Port Groups
    • Creating VMkernel ports. Creating, sizing, customizing Virtual Switches

 

  • NAS Shared Storage (HoL)
    • Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
    • Shared Storage options
    • NFS Overview
    • Configuring ESXi to use NFS Shares
    • Troubleshooting NFS connections

 

  • Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines (HoL)
    • 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, VMware Tools into a VM

 

  • vCenter Server and the Next Generation Client (HoL)
    • vCenter feature overview and components
    • Single Sign On and Inventory Service
    • Import and configure vCenter Server Appliance (VSA)
    • VMware Licensing
    • Organizing vCenter’s inventory view
    • Importing ESXi hosts into vCenter management
    • Installing and Using the vSphere Next Generation vSphere Client (NGC)

 

  • VM Rapid Deployment w. Templates, Clones (HoL)
    • Templates – Virtual Machine Golden Master images
    • Creating, modifying, updating and working with Templates
    • Patching, and refreshing Templates
    • Best practices for cloning and templating
    • Adding and resizing virtual disks

 

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

 

  • Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage (HoL)
    • 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
    • Scanning and rescanning iSCSI SANS
    • Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices

 

  • VMFS – The VMware File System  (HoL)
    • Unique file system properties of VMFS
    • Managing shared Volumes
    • Creating new VMFS partitions
    • Managing VMFS capacity with LUN spanning and LUN expansion
    • Native and 3rd party Multipathing with Fibre and iSCSI SANs
    • VMFS performance considerations

 

  • ESXi and vCenter Alarms (HoL)
    • Alarm categories and definitions
    • Creating custom alarms and actions
    • Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them

 

  • Resource Management and Resource Pools (HoL)
    • How ESXi delivers resources to VMs
    • Shares, Reservations and Limits
    • CPU resource scheduling
    • Memory resource scheduling
    • Resource Pools

 

  • Consolidation with vCenter Converter  (HoL)
    • 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

 

  • VM Hot and Cold Migration, Storage VMotion (HoL)
    • Cold Migrations to new ESXi hosts, datastores
    • Hot Migrations with VMotion
    • VMotion requirements and dependencies
    • How VMotion works – detailed explanation
    • Troubleshooting VMotion
    • Storage VMotion for hot VM disk migrations

 

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

 

  • Rapid VM Recovery with HA Clusters (HoL)
    • High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
    • VMware High Availability clusters
    • VMware Fault Tolerance

 

  • Host Profiles (HoL)
    • 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

 

  • VMware Replication
    • Establishing Time to Recovery requirements
    • Overview of SAN LUN replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager
    • Installing and configuring VMware Replication for individual VM replication
    • Replicating a VM
    • Recovering a replicated VM

 

  • Patching ESXi hosts with Update Manager (HoL)
    • Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
    • Establishing a patch baseline
    • Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

 

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

 

  • Final Thoughts
    • Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
    • Determining which workloads to consolidate
    • Protecting against virtual machine leakage/theft
    • Other considerations

 

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