VMware vSphere v6.0 with ESXi and vCenter Boot Camp

Course Description Overview

035015

5 days

PLEASE NOTE: Lab access is available as a separate purchase and will require a reservation.

This powerful 5-day, extended-hours class is an intensive introduction to VMware vSphere™ including VMware ESXi™ 6.0 and vCenter™. This course has been completely rewritten to reflect the changes and improvements introduced in vSphere 6. Our courseware and labs have been fully updated and now use Web Client rather than legacy vSphere Client for both presentation material and lab procedures.

Assuming no prior virtualization experience, this class starts with the basics and rapidly progresses to advanced topics. With 40+% of class time is devoted to labs, students learn the skills they need to become effective vSphere administrators.

Labs start with installation and configuration of stand-alone ESXi servers and progress to shared storage, networking and centralized management. The class continues to advanced topics including resource balancing, high availability, power management, back up and recovery, performance, vCenter redundancy, VM redundancy. Disaster recovery, rapid deployment, hot migration and workload consolidation are also covered.

This class is unique in its approach; which is to identify and eliminate common IT pain points using vSphere. Students learn how to deliver business value; not just the technical or mechanical aspects of the software.

By the end of the class, attendees will have developed in-depth vSphere knowledge, skills, best practices. Attendees will be able to design, implement, configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot vSphere 6.0.

Course Objectives:

At the end of the course, attendees will be able to:

Explain the many significant benefits of virtualization
Install ESXi Server according to best practices
Configure and manage local storage
Create virtual switches and use pNICs to uplink virtual to physical LAN segments
Understand and use advanced vSwitch settings like NIC Teaming and Security
Improve network performance with Jumbo Frames
Understand and use shared SAN storage including Fibre SAN, iSCSI SAN
Create and use Raw Device Maps
Define and use file share (NAS) datastores
Install, configure and update the Platform Service Controller and vCenter Server Appliance
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, VMotion hot migrations and Storage VMotion storage migrations
Configure, manage, monitor and secure users and groups
Understand the benefits and trade offs of network attached storage and Fibre, iSCSI SANs
Deploy and use VMware Replication to implement Virtual Machine disaster preparedness
Create and manage load balanced Distributed Resource Scheduling clusters
Understand, create and manage high availability clusters to protect against VM service loss caused by ESXi server failures
Configure VMware Fault Tolerance to maintain VM availability in the event of an ESXi host failure
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 and use Distributed Virtual Switches
Troubleshoot common problems

Target Student:

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
Operators responsible for day-to-day operation of Virtual Infrastructure
Performance analysts who need to understand, provision, monitor Virtual Infrastructure
Business Continuity specialists responsible for disaster recovery and high availability
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.

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-specific Technical Requirements Software:

Course-specific Technical Requirements Hardware:

Certification reference (where applicable)

Course Content:

Topics List

Our class covers the following topics:

Virtualization Infrastructure Overview
How to Install, Configure ESXi 6.0 Installable(HoL1)
Virtual and Physical Networking(HoL)
Advanced Virtual Networking(HoL)
Configure and use NAS Shared Storage(HoL)
Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines(HoL)
Install and Deploy the vCenter Server Appliance(HoL)
VM Rapid Deployment using Templates, Clones(HoL)
Advanced Virtual Hardware – Hot Plug CPU/Memory(HoL)
ESXi and vCenter Permission Model(HoL)
Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage(HoL)
Work with Raw Device Maps(HoL)
VMFS – The VMware Cluster File System(HoL)
ESXi and vCenter Alarms(HoL)
Resource Management and Resource Pools(HoL)
Consolidation with vCenter Converter(HoL)
VMotion Hot migration, Cold Migration, Storage VMotion(HoL)
Load Balancing w. Distributed Resource Scheduler clusters(HoL)
Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters(HoL)
High VM availability with HA Fault Tolerance(HoL)
Disaster Preparedness with vSphere Replication (HoL)
Patch Management with VMware Update Manager(HoL)
Managing Scalability and Performance(HoL)
Create, configure and use vNetwork Distributed Virtual Switches(HoL)
Final Thoughts

1 HoL – Every attendee perform one or more Hands on Labs at the end of each chapter

Hands On Labs

Attendees will complete the following hands on labs during the class:

Install of ESXi 6.0 and perform post-install configurations
Create and update network Standard Virtual Switches
Use NIC Teams for improved performance and redundancy. Enable Jumbo Frames for improved network performance. Configure Stand-by pNICs for improved network availability
Define, connect to and browse NFS file shares. Create a Content Library and add ISO images
Create a Virtual Machine and install a guest OS into the VM. Install VMware Tools into the VM. Add 3rd party tools and utilities to the VM
Export a powered off VM in Open Virtual Machine Format. Import the OVF VM back into ESXi
Installing and Configuring the Platform Service Controller
Install and configure the vCenter Server Appliance
Configure Single Sign On (SSO) identity sources including Active Directory
Configure vCenter's inventory views to organize inventory objects
Configure and use VMware Web Client
Work with Clones and Templates. Convert a VM into a template. Rapidly deploy new VMs from template. Copy VMs using cloning.
Use Guest OS customization to easily change the identity of a VM. Create, update and deploy VMs using Guest OS Customization Specifications
Work with virtual disks. Hot add a secondary virtual disk. Grow a non-system volume. Grow a Windows system disk and increase it's partitions without the need for 3rd party tools
Configure and test hotplug vCPUs. Create multi-core vCPUs
Work with vCenter permissions. Use and customize Roles
vCenter alarms for monitoring key infrastructure objects. Send SNMP traps to a trap receiver on high VM resource consumption
iSCSI, Fibre Storage Area Networks. Connecting to shared storage
Configure and add a Virtual Raw Device Map to a VM
VMware VMFS – VMware's proprietary cluster file system. How to create, tune and grow VMFS volumes
Create, manage and monitor Resource Pools. Work with resource tuning settings.
VM VMotion migration, Cold Migration, Storage Migration
Automated VM resource load balancing with Distributed Resource Scheduling clusters
Use High Availability clusters to minimize VM down time due to server failures
Implementing VM disaster preparedness with VMware Replication
Using Converter Enterprise 6.0 to migrate physical machines to VMs
Set up VMware Update Manager to patch/update ESXi hosts
Create configure and use vNetwork Distributed Switches
Performance analysis and benchmarking storage and networking