By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Install and configure ESXi hosts

• Deploy and configure vCenter

• Use the vSphere Client to create the vCenter inventory and assign roles to vCenter users

• Create virtual networks using vSphere standard switches and distributed switches

• Create and configure datastores using storage technologies supported by vSphere

• Use the vSphere Client to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots

• Create content libraries for managing templates and deploying virtual machines

• Manage virtual machine resource allocation

• Migrate virtual machines with vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion

• Create and configure a vSphere cluster that is enabled with vSphere High Availability (HA) and vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler

• Manage the life cycle of vSphere to keep vCenter, ESXi hosts, and virtual machines up to date

Audience

System administrators
System engineers

Prerequisites

This course has the following prerequisites:

System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

Programme

1 Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 vSphere and Virtualization Overview
• Explain basic virtualization concepts
• Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere
• Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, storage, and GPUs

3 Installing and Configuring ESXi
• Install an ESXi host
• Recognize ESXi user account best practices
• Configure the ESXi host settings using the DCUI and VMware Host Client

4 Deploying and Configuring vCenter
• Recognize ESXi hosts communication with vCenter
• Deploy vCenter Server Appliance
• Configure vCenter settings
• Use the vSphere Client to add and manage license keys
• Create and organize vCenter inventory objects
• Recognize the rules for applying vCenter permissions
• View vCenter logs and events

5 Configuring vSphere Networking
• Configure and view standard switch configurations
• Configure and view distributed switch configurations
• Recognize the difference between standard switches and distributed switches
• Explain how to set networking policies on standard and distributed switches

6 Configuring vSphere Storage
• Recognize vSphere storage technologies
• Identify types of vSphere datastores
• Describe Fibre Channel components and addressing
• Describe iSCSI components and addressing
• Configure iSCSI storage on ESXi
• Create and manage VMFS datastores
• Configure and manage NFS datastores

7 Deploying Virtual Machines
• Create and provision VMs
• Explain the importance of VMware Tools
• Identify the files that make up a VM
• Recognize the components of a VM
• Navigate the vSphere Client and examine VM settings and options
• Modify VMs by dynamically increasing resources
• Create VM templates and deploy VMs from them
• Clone VMs
• Create customization specifications for guest operating systems
• Create local, published, and subscribed content libraries
• Deploy VMs from content libraries
• Manage multiple versions of VM templates in content libraries

8 Managing Virtual Machines
• Recognize the types of VM migrations that you can perform within a vCenter instance and across vCenter instances
• Migrate VMs using vSphere vMotion
• Describe the role of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility in migrations
• Migrate VMs using vSphere Storage vMotion
• Take a snapshot of a VM
• Manage, consolidate, and delete snapshots
• Describe CPU and memory concepts in relation to a virtualized environment
• Describe how VMs compete for resources
• Define CPU and memory shares, reservations, and limits

9 Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters
• Create a vSphere cluster enabled for vSphere DRS and vSphere HA
• View information about a vSphere cluster
• Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster
• Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings
• Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster
• Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures
• Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster
• Recognize vSphere HA design considerations
• Recognize the use cases for various vSphere HA settings
• Configure a vSphere HA cluster
• Recognize when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance

10 Managing the vSphere Lifecycle
• Enable vSphere Lifecycle Manager in a vSphere cluster
• Describe features of the vCenter Update Planner
• Run vCenter upgrade prechecks and interoperability reports
• Recognize features of vSphere Lifecycle Manager
• Distinguish between managing hosts using baselines and managing hosts using images
• Describe how to update hosts using baselines
• Describe ESXi images
• Validate ESXi host compliance against a cluster image and update ESXi hosts
• Update ESXi hosts using vSphere Lifecycle Manager
• Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager automatic recommendations
• Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware