VMware vSphere 6.5 Fast Track Boot Camp

Course Number:

N/A

Audience:

This course is intended for candidates seeking to fill entry-level System Administration positions that require exposure to virtual infrastructure technologies.
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 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
  • Upgrade and use Host Client to manage standalone ESXi hosts
  • Create virtual and virtual to physical network configurations
  • Configure and manage local storage resources
  • Use vSwitch policies to improve network security
  • Explain and select the optimal pNIC teaming strategy for network availability and performance
  • Implement Jumbo Frames to improve network throughput and reduce protocol overhead
  • Define and use file share (NAS / NFS) datastores
  • Create virtual machines, install operating systems and applications
  • Install, configure and upgrade VMware Tools
  • Install, configure and update the Platform Service Controller and vCenter Server Appliance
  • Use rapid deployment to consistently and quickly deploy new virtual machines
  • Create clones – one-time copies of virtual machine
  • Use Guest OS customization to rapidly configure new VMs according to requirements
  • Configure and use hotplug hardware including hot-add vCPUs and Memory
  • Add and grow virtual disks including system disks and secondary volumes
  • Configure and use roles. Add, manage, monitor and secure users and groups
  • Understand the benefits and tradeoffs of network attached storage and Fibre, iSCSI SANs
  • Configure and use shared SAN storage including Fibre SAN, iSCSI SAN
  • Use Raw Device Maps to give VMs direct connectivity to SAN volumes
  • Create VMFS 5 datastores. Extend VMFS datastores using LUN spanning and expansion
  • Explain and use VMware’s three multipathing policies for storage performance and availability
  • Use vCenter alarms to monitor ESXi, VM, storage and network health, performance, state
  • Use Resource Pools to delegate host / cluster pCPU, pRAM to meet Service Level Agreements
  • Perform VM cold migrations, hot migrations and Storage VMotion
  • Configure and manage server CPU and Memory capacity and maintain VM responsiveness with Distributed Resource Schedule load balanced clusters
  • Use HA to minimize VM down time due to ESXi host failures, storage network failures or SAN failures
  • Use VMware Fault Tolerance to eliminate VM down time due to host, network or storage failures
  • Implement a disaster recovery strategy using VMware Replication
  • Use vSphere Replication to hot replicate and recover business critical Virtual Machines
  • Patch and update ESXi servers using vCenter Update Manager
  • Monitor and tune ESXi hosts and virtual machine for best performance
  • Build, configure, and use distributed virtual switches. Migrate hosts and networking to dvSwitches
  • 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
    • What’s New and Improved in vSphere 6.5
  • How to Install, Configure ESXi 6.5
    • Understanding ESXi
    • Selecting, validating and preparing your server
    • Storage controllers, disks and partitions
    • Software installation and best practices
    • Joining ESXi to a Domain
    • Local User Management and Policies
    • First look at the VMware vSphere Client and VMware Host 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
  • Advanced Networking
    • Use vSwitch Security policies to defend against malicious VM network activity
    • Explain and implement all five physical NIC team policies
    • Improve network health and fault detection by beaconing
    • How to enable and test Jumbo Frames
  • Connecting to and Using NAS Shared Storage
    • Benefits shared storage offer to virtual infrastructure
    • NFS overview
    • Configuring ESXi to use NFS shares
    • Configuring NFS for performance and redundancy
    • NFS use cases
    • 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 Appliance and Web Client
    • The need for Identity Source management
    • Installing an external Platform Service Controller
    • Installing and configuring vCenter Server Appliance
    • Connecting Single Sign On (SSO) to Active Directory and other identity sources
    • vCenter feature overview and components
    • Organizing vCenter’s inventory views
    • Importing ESXi hosts into vCenter management
    • Administering vCenter Server with Web Client
  • 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
    • Hotplug VM virtual CPUs and Memory
  • 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 and iSCSI SANs
    • iSCSI overview
    • Virtual and physical iSCSI adapters
    • Connecting to iSCSI storage
    • Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices
    • Understanding the benefits of VMware VAAI compliant storage
  • Direct VM to SAN Access with Raw Device Maps
    • Explain Physical and Virtual Raw Device Maps (RDMs)
    • Use cases for Raw Device Maps
    • How Raw Device Maps work with VM cold, VMotion and Storage VMotion migrations
    • Using RDMs to implement Virtual and Virtual/Physical Microsoft Fail Over Clusters
  • VMware File System (VMFS)
    • 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
    • VMFS scalability and reliability
  • Infrastructure Monitoring with vCenter Alarms
    • Alarm categories and definitions
    • Creating custom alarms and actions
    • Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them
  • Resource Management and Resource Pools
    • How ESXi delivers resources to VMs
    • Shares, Reservations and Limits
    • CPU resource scheduling
    • Memory resource scheduling
    • Resource Pools
  • VMotion Migration, Cold Migration, Storage VMotion
    • 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
  • Distributed Resource Scheduling 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
    • Learn the features and benefits of DRS Power Management
  • Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters
    • High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
    • VMware High Availability clusters
    • VMware Fault Tolerance
  • Continuous VM Availability with Fault Tolerance
    • How Fault Tolerance provides continuous VM availability during ESXi host, storage network and SAN storage failures
    • How to configure ESXi hosts and networks to enable Fault Tolerance
    • How to configure, enable and monitor Fault Tolerance on VMs
    • Managing Fault Tolerance protected VMs
    • Fault Tolerance scalability, performance and limitations
  • Disaster Preparedness with vSphere Replication
    • Explain vSphere Replication features and Use Cases
    • Import the vSphere Replication virtual appliance
    • Configure vSphere Replication including Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs)
    • Enable vSphere Replication on a VM
    • Recover a VM using vSphere Replication
  • Patch Management with VMware Update Manager
    • Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
    • Establishing a patch baseline
    • Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts
  • 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 ESXi host performance
    • Performance and capacity planning strategies
  • Distributed Virtual Switches
    • Features and benefits of dvSwitches vs. Standard vSwitches
    • How to create a new dvSwitches
    • Role of dvUplink ports and dvSwitch Port Groups
    • Migrating physical NICs to dvSwitches
    • Migrating VMs and VMkernel ports to dvSwitches
  • Final Thoughts
    • Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
    • Determining which workloads to consolidate
    • Other considerations

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