INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING VMWARE ESX SERVER VM-010

Course Overview

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 update the Platform Service Controller and vCenter
• Server Appliance
• Create and use Content Libraries to manage ISO repositories
• 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, hot migrations and Storage VMotion
• 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 hot back up and recover critical Virtual Machines
• Create and manage load balanced clusters
• Enable, configure and use Distributed Power Management to reduce electrical power by soft powering off unneeded ESXi servers
• 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
• Understand how VMware and third party products, including operating systems, are impacted by virtualization
• Understand and use advanced vSwitch settings like NIC Teaming and Security
• Troubleshoot common problems

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.

Syllabus

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 6.0

Chapter 2 – How to Install, Configure ESXi 6.0 Installable
• 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 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 – Content Libraries & 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

Chapter 6 – vCenter Server and the Next Generation Web Client
• The need for Identity Source management
• Installing the Platform Service Controller
• Installing and configuring vCenter Server Appliance
• Connecting Single Sign On (SSO) to Active Directory and other identity sources
• vCenter feature overview and components
• Organizing vCenter’s inventory views
• Importing ESX 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

Chapter 8 – ESXi and vCenter Permission Model
• VMware Security model
• Configuring local users and groups
• 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
• 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 – ESX and vCenter Alarms
• Alarm categories and definitions
• Creating custom alarms and actions
• Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them

Chapter 12 – Resource Management and Resource Pools
• How ESX delivers resources to VMs
• Shares, Reservations and Limits
• CPU resource scheduling
• Memory resource scheduling
• Resource Pools

Chapter 13 – Consolidation with VMware Converter Standalone
• 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
• Cold Migrations to new ESX 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 – Distributed Resource Scheduling Clusters
• Delegated resource management with Resource Pools
• 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 16 – Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters
• High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
• VMware High Availability clusters
• VMware Fault Tolerance

Chapter 17 – Hot VM Protection 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 18 – Patch Management with VMware Update Manager
• Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
• Establishing a patch baseline
• Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

Chapter 19 – 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 20 – Final Thoughts
• Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
• Determining which workloads to consolidate
• Other considerations