VMware vSphere 6.5 Optimize, Upgrade, Troubleshoot
This powerful 5-day class provides an in-depth look at vSphere 6.5. In this course, cover how to deploy vSphere 6.5, how to optimize it – including VMs, ESXi hosts, vCenter Server Appliance, networking and shared SAN storage… with the goal of delivering both scalability and performance.
We show step-by-step how to upgrade or migrate to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5, how to use VMware Update Manager to upgrade ESXi hosts and how to use VUM how to upgrade VM virtual hardware.
And, we will also show you how to diagnose, isolate and fix common problems. All of vSphere Client, Host Client, Web Client and command line tools are all used to explore, configure, update, investigate and zero in on performance bottlenecks and trouble spots. Up to 45% of class time is devoted to labs so concepts, skills and best practices are developed and reinforced.
By the end of the class, attendees will have learned practical, actionable skills in vSphere design, implementation, upgrading, sizing, scalability, performance optimization and troubleshooting.
This class is suitable for anyone who want to learn how to extract the maximum benefit from their investment in Virtual Infrastructure, including:
- System architects or others who need to design virtual infrastructure
- Security specialists responsible for administering, managing, securing Virtual Infrastructure
- vSphere Administrators responsible for day-to-day operation of Virtual Infrastructure
- vSphere Performance analysts who need to understand, provision, monitor Virtual Infrastructure
- Storage administrators who work with Fibre / iSCSI SAN volumes and NAS datastores
- Managers who need an unbiased understanding of virtualization before committing their organization to a virtual infrastructure deployment.
Chapter 1 – Install, Configure
and Secure ESXi 6.5
Install and configure ESXi
6.5 using Best Practices
Enable and secure command line
access including the console and Secure Shell
Using Lockdown mode to restrict
management access
Lockdown modes introduced in
vSphere 6.5
Chapter 2 – Virtual and
Physical Networking
Create / update standard Virtual
Switches
vSwitch security policies
Network failure detection and
beaconing
Enabling Discovery Protocol
settings
Chapter 3 – Advanced Networking
Configuring vSwitch Security
policies, Promiscuous Mode, Forged Transmits and MAC address changes
Understanding and using Traffic
Shaping
The Five physical NIC teaming
policies including their pros / cons and use cases
Enabling and using Jumbo Frames
for improved performance and reduced protocol overhead
Troubleshoot networking
configuration and performance issues
Chapter 4 – Connecting to NAS
Shared storage
Connecting to NFS v3 storage
Network design for high service
availability
Best practices for performance and
reliability
Chapter 5 – Virtual
Hardware and Virtual Machines
VM virtual hardware, options
and limits
Creating and right-sizing Virtual
Machines for CPU, memory
Installing VMware Tools
Virtual Machine best practices
Import and export VMs in Open
Virtual Machine Format
Chapter 6 – vCenter Server and
Web Client
Deploy vCenter Server Appliance
6.0 via the command line and configuration files
Upgrade vCenter Appliance 6.0 to
vCenter Appliance 6.5
vCenter deployment and redundancy
options
Connecting Single Sign On (SSO) to
Active Directory and other identity sources
Chapter 7 – ESXi Command Line
Access
Import and configure vSphere
Management Assistant (vMA)
Using command line access tools
including esxcli, vicfg, vmware-cmd
Introduction to ESXtop
Working with ESXi log files
Using command line tools to review
and update configurations
Using command line tools to backup
and restore an ESXi host’s configuration
Chapter 8 – Virtual Machine
Rapid Deployment
How to create a Template VM
Using Guest OS Customization for
Windows and non-Windows OS'
Enabling, using Hotplug Virtual
CPU and memory
Enabling, using Hotplug disks,
networking, USB devices and more
Predictive and adaptive sizing
strategies for VMs
Troubleshooting Virtual Machine
issues
Chapter 9 – Use VMware
Update Manager to Upgrade ESXi hosts
Configure VMware Update
Managers
Create ESXi host Patch Baselines
Importing a new ESXi install media
image
Attaching a Host Upgrade patch
baseline
Performing host compliance scans
Upgrading an ESXi host from ESXi
6.0 to ESXi 6.5
Chapter 10 – Connecting to
Fibre & iSCSI Shared Storage
General SAN features and
capabilities
Overview of Fibre Storage Networks
VMware APIs for Array Integration
(VAAI)
Storage network design for
performance and redundancy
Connecting to Fibre and iSCSI
shared storage
iSCSI Hardware and Software
Initiators
iSCSI Static and Send Targets LUN
discovery
Troubleshooting storage issues
Chapter 11 – 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
Chapter 12 – VMware File System
(VMFS)
Unique file system properties of
VMFS
Creating and managing shared
Volumes
Managing VMFS capacity with LUN
spanning and LUN expansion
Understand VMware multipath
options
Benefits of using vendor multipath
solutions
Understanding and selecting
multipathing policies
VMFS performance, scalability and
reliability considerations
Review storage queuing, I/O aborts
and other storage issues
Diagnose and troubleshoot storage
performance
VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache
description and use cases
Troubleshooting VMFS issues
Chapter 13 – Storage Profiles
SAN and user defined storage
profiles
Using storage speed, replication
to define storage capabilities
VMware APIs for Storage Awareness
(VASA)
Creating VM storage profiles
VM/Storage compliance checks
Remediating incorrectly placed VMs
Understanding Storage I/O Control
Chapter 14 – Storage Load
Balancing with SDRS Clusters
Creating and using Storage
Distributed Resource Scheduling clusters (SDRS)
Cluster properties for capacity
and I/O load balancing
Best practices for building
storage clusters
Chapter 15 – 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
Chapter 16 – DRS Load Balancing
Clusters
Resource assignments including
reservations, shares and limits
Resource balanced clusters with
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) clusters
Per-VM cluster policy overrides
Features and benefits of DRS Power
Management
Troubleshooting DRS cluster issues
Predictive DRS
Chapter 17 – VMware High
Availability Clusters
Minimize unplanned VM down time
VMware High Availability clusters
VM requirements for HA Clusters
Storage fault recovery in High
Availability clusters (All Paths Down, Permanent Device Loss)
Monitoring VM health in HA
clusters
Admission Control policy settings
for predictable pCPU/pRAM resource availability
Identifying and troubleshooting
issues in VMware HA clusters
Chapter 18 – VMware Fault
Tolerance
Eliminate VM unplanned down time
with VMware Fault Tolerance
Role of the Primary and Secondary
VM in a Fault Tolerance configuration
Explain how Fast Checkpointing
keeps the Secondary VM vCPU, vRAM, vDisk up to date
Enabling VM Fault Tolerance
Initial VM synchronization
Testing Fault Tolerance
Chapter 19 – Distributed
vSwitch Features and Scalability
Features and benefits of
Distributed vSwitches
Role of the DVUplink port group
Adding ESXi hosts to dvSwitches
Creating dvSwitch port groups
Migrating physical NICs and
VMkernel ports to dvSwitches
dvSwitch configuration backup and
restore
Configuring custom VM MAC address
generation policies
Testing dvSwitch network health
Chapter 20 – 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
Hands On Labs:
Attendees will complete the
following hands on labs during the class:
Install of ESXi 6.5 and perform
post-install configuration steps
Review ESXi services and configure
ESXi firewall
Enable ESXi Lockdown mode to
prevent direct host configuration changes
Create/update Standard vSwitch
configurations
Configure vSwitch Security
Policies for Promiscuous Mode, MAC Address Changes and Forged Transmits
Configure a vSwitch, VMkernel
ports for Jumbo Frame use
Connect to NFS storage
Create a new VM according to best
practices
Update VMs for service by pCPU
cores (not hyperthreaded logical processors)
Import and configure vCenter
Server Appliance 6.0 via command line
Perform an upgrade of vCenter
Server Appliance from v6.0 to v6.5
Import and configure VMware
Management Assistant
Use vCLI command line tools like
vifptarget, esxcli, localcli, vmware-cmd and other commands
Use ESXtop to monitor resource use
and pinpoint performance concerns
Rapidly deploy VMs from Templates
and Clones
Tune VM vCPU to maximize CPU
performance
Enable and use Hot-plug virtual
hardware
Monitor storage controller queue
length and performance
Monitor ESXi host and VM memory
use
Configure and use VMware Update
Manager to update an ESXi host from ESXi 6.0 to ESXi 6.5
Use VMware Update Manager to
upgrade a VM’s virtual hardware
Connect to an iSCSI SAN
Create VMFS file systems. Expand
VMFS using LUN Spanning and LUN expansion
Create custom storage profiles and
assign them to VMFS volumes
Assign storage profiles to VMs and
perform storage compliance checks. Remediate non-compliant VMs
Create Storage DRS clusters and
use Storage DRS to manage storage capacity and I/O load
Create and Update a DRS cluster
Create a High Availability
Cluster. Configure All Paths Down and Permanent Device Loss policies in HA
Create a multi-core Fault Tolerant
VM
Create Distributed vSwitches
Bulk migrate VMs from Standard to
Distributed vSwitches
dvSwitch Configuration Backup Up
and Restore
Enable and use dvSwitch Health
Management
Using dvSwitch port shadowing
Testing network health on
dvSwitches
Work with dvSwitch configuration roll back and recovery