Course Overview

This hands-on training course explores installation, configuration, and management of VMware vSphere®, which consists of VMware vSphere® ESXi™ and VMware® vCenter Server™. This course is based on prerelease versions of ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1.

Completion of this course satisfies the prerequisite for taking the VMware Certified Professional 5 exam.

 

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, you should understand vSphere 5.1 functions and features and be able to do the following:

• Install and configure ESXi
• Install and configure vCenter Server components
• Use vCenter Server to configure and manage ESXi networking and storage
• Deploy, manage, and migrate virtual machines
• Manage user access to the VMware infrastructure
• Use vCenter Server to monitor resource usage
• Use vCenter Server to increase scalability
• Use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply ESXi patches
• Use vCenter Server to manage higher availability and data protection

 

Prerequisite

• System Administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux Operating Systems

 

Course Duration

• 5 days of instructor-led training
• 60% lecture and 40% hands-on lab

 

Target Audience

• System Administrators
• Systems Engineers
• Operators responsible for ESXi and vCenter Server

 

Course Modules

• Course Introduction
  • – Introductions and course logistics

 

• Introduction to VMware Virtualization
  • – Introduce virtualization, virtual machines, and vSphere components
  • – Explain the concepts of server, network, and storage virtualization
  • – Describe where vSphere fits into the cloud architecture
  • – Install and use vSphere user interfaces

 

• Creating Virtual Machines
  • – Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
  • – Deploy a single virtual machine

 

• VMware vCenter Server
  • – Introduce the vCenter Server architecture
  • – Introduce VMware® vCenter™ Server Appliance™
  • – Configure and manage vCenter Server Appliance
  • – Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses

 

• Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
  • – Describe, create, and manage a standard virtual switch
  • – Describe and modify standard virtual switch properties
  • – Configure virtual switch load-balancing algorithms

 

• Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage
  • – Introduce storage protocols and device names
  • – Configure ESXi with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
  • – Create and manage vSphere datastores
  • – Deploy and manage VMware vSphere® Storage Appliance

 

• Virtual Machine Management
  • Use templates and cloning to deploy virtual machines
  • Modify and manage virtual machines
  • Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
  • Perform VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® migrations
  • Create a VMware vSphere® vApp™

 

• Data Protection
  • – Discuss a strategy for backing up ESXi hosts and vCenter Server
  • – Discuss solutions for backing up virtual machines efficiently

 

• Access and Authentication Control
  • – Control user access through roles and permissions
  • – Configure and manage the ESXi firewall
  • – Configure ESXi lockdown mode
  • – Integrate ESXi with Active Directory
  • – Explain VMware® vShield Endpoint™ integration in VSphere

 

• Resource Management and Monitoring
  • – Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts
  • – Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
  • – Configure and manage resource pools
  • – Monitor resource usage using vCenter Server performance graphs and alarms

 

• High Availability and Fault Tolerance
  • – Introduce the new VMware vSphere® High Availability architecture
  • – Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
  • – Introduce VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance
  • – Describe VMware vSphere® Replication

 

• Scalability
  • – Configure and manage a VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS) cluster
  • – Configure Enhanced vMotion Compatibility
  • – Use vSphere HA and DRS together

 

• Patch Management
  • – Use Update Manager to manage ESXi patching
  • – Install Update Manager and the Update Manager plug-in
  • – Create patch baselines
  • – Scan and remediate hosts

 

• Installing VMware Components
  • – Introduce ESXi installation
  • – Describe boot-from-SAN requirements
  • – Introduce vCenter Server deployment options
  • – Describe vCenter Server hardware, software, and database requirements
  • – Install vCenter Server (Windows-based)