VMware vSphere 5.5 with ESXi and vCenter

Course Duration: 5 days

Overview
This powerful 5-day class is an intense introduction to virtualization using VMware’s vSphere™ 5.5 including VMware ESXi™ 5.5 and vCenter™. Assuming no prior virtualization experience, this class starts with the basics and rapidly progresses to more advanced topics. More than 40% of class time is devoted to labs so concepts, skills and best practices are developed and reinforced.

Initial labs focus on installation and configuration of stand-alone ESXi servers. As the class progresses, shared storage, networking and centralized management are introduced. The class continues on to more advanced topics including resource balancing, high availability, back up and recovery, troubleshooting and more. Disaster recovery, rapid deployment, hot migration and workload consolidation are also covered.

This class is unique in its approach; which is to identify common IT pain points and then clearly explain and demonstrate how virtualization delivers clear, tangible benefits (e.g.: reduced costs, greater consistency, responsiveness, reduced administration, server consolidation, etc.). Each topic is presented from the perspective of delivering key business value; not just the technical or mechanical aspects of the software.

By the end of the class, attendees will have learned the benefits, skills, and best practices of virtualization. Attendees will be able to design, implement, deploy, configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot VMware vSphere 5.5.

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, distributed virtual, and virtual to physical LAN segments
• Understand and use shared SAN storage including Fibre SAN, iSCSI SAN
• Define and use file share (NAS) datastores
• Install, configure and administer VMware vCenter Server Appliance
• Create virtual machines, install operating systems and applications
• Rapidly deployment of VMs using golden-master templates
• Create clones – one-time copies of virtual machine
• Perform VM cold migrations, hot migrations and Storage VMotion
• Configure, manage, monitor and secure users and groups
• Understand the benefits and trade offs of network, SAN,
• Deploy and use VMware Data Recovery to back up and recover VMs
• Create and manage load balanced clusters
• Understand, create and manage high availability clusters to protect against VM service loss caused by ESXi server failures
• Monitor and tune both ESXi and virtual machine performance
• Patch and update ESXi servers using vCenter Update Manager
• Replicate critical VMs to protect against data loss and service loss
• Understand how VMware and third party products, including operating systems, are impacted by virtualization
• Troubleshoot common problems

Who Should Attend?
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 monitor, managing, securing and administering Virtual Infrastructure
– Operators responsible for day-to-day operation of Virtual Infrastructure
– Performance and capacity analysts who need to understand, provision, monitor and performance tune Virtual Infrastructure
– Backup Administrators who need to understand the impact of existing and new back up strategies in a virtual environment
– Business Continuity specialists responsible for disaster recovery and high availability
– Storage administrators who need to understand how VMware ESXi uses Fibre SAN and 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.

Chapter List
Our class consists of the following 22 chapters:

Chapter 1 – Virtualization Infrastructure Overview
Chapter 2 – How to Install, Configure ESXi 5.5 Installable (HoL)
Chapter 3 – Virtual and Physical Networking (HoL)
Chapter 4 – NAS Shared Storage (HoL)
Chapter 5 – Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines (HoL)
Chapter 6 – vCenter (HoL)
Chapter 7 – VM Rapid Deployment using Templates, Clones (HoL)
Chapter 8 – ESXi and vCenter Permission Model (HoL)
Chapter 9 – Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage (HoL)
Chapter 10 – VMFS – The VMware File System (HoL)
Chapter 11 – ESXi and vCenter Alarms (HoL)
Chapter 12 – Resource Management and Resource Pools (HoL)
Chapter 13 – Consolidation with vCenter Converter Standalone (HoL)
Chapter 14 – VM Hot and Cold Migration, Storage VMotion (HoL)
Chapter 15 – Load Balancing w. Distributed Resource Scheduler (HoL)
Chapter 16 – Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters (HoL)
Chapter 17 – Host Profiles (HoL)
Chapter 18 – vSphere Replication (HoL)
Chapter 19 – Patch Management with VMware Update Manager (HoL)
Chapter 20 – Managing Scalability and Performance (HoL)
Chapter 21 – Final Thoughts

Hands On Labs
Attendees will complete the following hands on labs during the class:

• Install of ESXi 5.5 and perform post-install configurations
• Create and update network Standard Virtual Switches
• Define, connect to and browse NFS file shares
• 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
• Configure Single Sign On (SSO) identity sources including Active Directory
• Install and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Configure vCenter’s inventory views to organize inventory objects
• Install and configure the VMware Next Generation 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
• Work with vCenter permissions. Use and customize Roles
• Create, update and work with Network Standard vSwitches. Create NIC Teams for added performance and redundancy
• iSCSI, Fibre Storage Area Networks. Connecting to shared storage
• VMware VMFS – VMware’s proprietary cluster file system. How to create, tune and grow VMFS volumes
• Resource management. Work with resource tuning settings. Create, manage and monitor Resource Pools
• VM migration including Cold Migration, Storage Migration and VMotion
• Automated VM resource load balancing with DRS clusters
• Use HA clusters to minimize VM down time due to server failures
• Using Converter Enterprise to migrate physical machines to VMs
• vCenter alarms for monitoring key infrastructure objects. Send SNMP traps to a trap receiver on high VM resource consumption
• Set up VMware Update Manager to patch/update ESXi hosts
• Installing, configuring VMware Replication. Replicating and recovering a VM with VMware Replication
• Performance analysis and benchmarking storage and networking

Detailed Chapter List

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

Chapter 2 – How to Install, Configure ESXi 5.5 Installable
Understanding ESXi
Storage controllers, disks and partitions
Software installation and best practices
Joining ESXi to a Domain
First look at the VMware vSphere Client

Chapter 3 – Virtual and Physical Networking (HoL)
vNetwork standard and distributed virtual Switches
Virtual Switches, Ports and Port Groups
Creating VMkernel ports. Creating, sizing, customizing Virtual Switches

Chapter 4 – NAS Shared Storage (HoL)
Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
Shared Storage options
NFS Overview
Configuring ESXi to use NFS Shares
Troubleshooting NFS connections

Chapter 5 – Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines (HoL)
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, VMware Tools into a VM

Chapter 6 – vCenter Server and the Next Generation Client (HoL)
vCenter feature overview and components
Single Sign On and Inventory Service
Import and configure vCenter Server Appliance (VSA)
VMware Licensing
Organizing vCenter’s inventory views
Importing ESXi hosts into vCenter management
Installing and Using the vSphere Next Generation vSphere Client (NGC)

Chapter 7 – VM Rapid Deployment w. Templates, Clones (HoL)
Templates – Virtual Machine Golden Master images
Creating, modifying, updating and working with Templates
Patching, and refreshing Templates
Best practices for cloning and templating
Adding and resizing virtual disks

Chapter 8 – ESXi and vCenter Permission Model (HoL)
VMware Security model
Configuring local users and groups
Managing local and vCenter permissions
Local, Domain and Active Directory users and groups
How permissions are applied

Chapter 9 – Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage (HoL)
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

Chapter 10 – VMFS – The VMware File System (HoL)
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

Chapter 11 – ESXi and vCenter Alarms (HoL)
Alarm categories and definitions
Creating custom alarms and actions
Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them

Chapter 12 – Resource Management and Resource Pools (HoL)
How ESXi delivers resources to VMs
Shares, Reservations and Limits
CPU resource scheduling
Memory resource scheduling
Resource Pools

Chapter 13 – Consolidation with vCenter Converter (HoL)
vCenter Converter overview
Converting physical machines, virtual machines and OS Images
Cold migrations of physical machines to virtual machines
Hot migrations of physical machines to virtual machines

Chapter 14 – VM Hot and Cold Migration, Storage VMotion (HoL)
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 15 – Load Balancing with DRS Clusters (HoL)
Delegated resource management with Resource Pools
Resource balanced clusters with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
Per-VM cluster policy overrides

Chapter 16 – Rapid VM Recovery with HA Clusters (HoL)
High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
VMware High Availability clusters
VMware Fault Tolerance

Chapter 17 – Host Profiles (HoL)
Using Host Profiles to capture an ESXi host configuration
Perform configuration compliance scans
Remediating out of compliance configuration issues
Rapid ESXi host deployment/configuration with Host Profiles

Chapter 18 – VMware Replication
Establishing Time to Recovery requirements
Overview of SAN LUN replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager
Installing and configuring VMware Replication for individual VM replication
Replicating a VM
Recovering a replicated VM

Chapter 19 – Patching ESXi hosts with Update Manager (HoL)
Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
Establishing a patch baseline
Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

Chapter 20 – Managing Scalability and Performance (HoL)
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

Chapter 21 – Final Thoughts
Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
Determining which workloads to consolidate
Protecting against virtual machine leakage/theft
Other considerations