VMware vSphere 6.7 with ESXi and vCenter Training

We offer private customized training for groups of 3 or more attendees.

Course Description

 
This powerful 5-day class is an intensive introduction to VMware vSphere including VMware ESX 6.5 and vCenter. This course has been completely rewritten to reflect the most recent changes and improvements introduced in vSphere 6.5. Our courseware and labs have been fully updated and now use Host Client and 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 plus percent 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 and VM cold, hot and storage migration. 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 learned the skills, and best practices of virtualization. Attendees will be able to design, implement, deploy, configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot vSphere 6.5.
Course Length: 5 Days
Course Tuition: $2850 (US)

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 Outline

 

Chapter 1 - 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

Chapter 2 – How to Install, Configure ESXi 6.7

  • 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 Host Client

Chapter 3 – 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

Chapter 4 – Connecting to and Using NAS Shared Storage

  • Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
  • Shared Storage options
  • NFS Overview
  • Configuring ESX to use NFS Shares
  • Configuring NFS for performance and redundancy
  • NFS Use Cases
  • Troubleshooting NFS connections

Chapter 5 – 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
  • Use and update VMware Host Client

Chapter 6 – vCenter Server Appliance and Web Client

  • The need for Identity Source management
  • Installing and configuring vCenter Server Appliance with embedded Platform Service Controller
  • 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
  • Installing and Using the vSphere Next Generation Web Client

Chapter 7 – 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
  • Hotplug VM virtual CPUs and Memory

Chapter 8 – ESXi and vCenter Permission Model

  • VMware Security model
  • Configuring local users
  • Managing local permissions
  • vCenter security model
  • Local, Domain and Active Directory users and groups
  • How permissions are applied

Chapter 9 – Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage

  • 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
  • Understanding the benefits of VMware VAAI compliant storage

Chapter 10 – VMware File System (VMFS)

  • Unique file system properties of VMFS
  • Managing shared Volumes
  • Creating new VMFS partitions
  • Introduction to VMFS 6 features and capabilities
  • 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

Chapter 11 – Infrastructure Monitoring with vCenter Alarms

  • Alarm categories and definitions
  • Creating custom alarms and actions
  • Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them
  • Configure vCenter so it can send E-mail and SNMP alerts
  • Work with alarm conditions, triggers and actions
  • Identify most useful alarms to review and enable

Chapter 12 – Resource Management and Resource Pools

  • Delegate resources in bulk using Resource Pools
  • How ESX delivers resources to VMs
  • Shares, Reservations and Limits
  • CPU resource scheduling
  • Memory resource scheduling
  • Resource Pools

Chapter 13 – VMotion Migration, Cold Migration, Storage VMotion

  • Cold Migrations to new ESX hosts, datastores
  • Hot Migrations with VMotion
  • VMotion requirements and dependencies
  • How VMotion works – detailed explanation
  • How to test ESXi hosts and VMs for VMotion compatibility
  • Troubleshooting VMotion
  • Storage VMotion for hot VM disk migrations

Chapter 14 – Distributed Resource Scheduling Load Balanced Clusters

  • CPU and Memory resource balanced clusters with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
  • 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

Chapter 15 – Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters

  • High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
  • VMware High Availability clusters
  • How VMware HA protects against ESXi host, storage network and SAN volume failures
  • Introduction to VMware Fault Tolerance

Chapter 16 – 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

Chapter 17 – Patch Management with VMware Update Manager

  • Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
  • Establishing a patch baseline
  • Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

Chapter 18 – 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 ESX host performance
  • Performance and capacity planning strategies

Chapter 19 – Final Thoughts

  • Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
  • Determining which workloads to consolidate
  • Other considerations

Course Directory [training on all levels]

Upcoming Classes
Gain insight and ideas from students with different perspectives and experiences.

Interesting Reads Take a class with us and receive a book of your choosing for 50% off MSRP.