Instructor-Led Virtualization Training

5 days

This in-person instructor-led lab-intensive course will focus on going deep into VMware vSphere technical content that includes EXSi and vCenter.  Labs that start with installation and configuration of stand-alone ESXi hosts and progress through shared storage, networking, building VMs and centralized management. The class continues with rapid VM deployment, hot-plug virtual hardware, permissions, alarms resource management, VM high availability clusters, VM load balanced clusters, VM cold, hot and storage migration, updating/ upgrading ESXi hosts and performance. Also covered are Advanced Networking, Content Libraries, Raw Device Maps, Fault Tolerance Protected VMs and Distributed vSwitches.

Prerequisites: Attendees should have user, operator or administrator experience on common operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux™, Mac OS/X, etc. Experience installing, configuring and managing operating systems, storage and / or networks is helpful 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.

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 goldenmaster templates
• Create clones – one-time copies of virtual machine
• Perform VM cold migrations, VMotion hot migrations and Storage VMotion datastore 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

Course Outline

Chapter 1 – Virtualization Infrastructure Overview

• Virtualization explained
• How virtualization solves common issues with workload management
• Overview of VMware vSphere software components and features

Chapter 2 – How to Install, Configure ESXi 8.0

• Understanding ESXi
• Selecting, validating and preparing your server
• Software installation and best practices
• Join ESXi to a Domain
• Local User Management and Policies
• Managing ESXi hosts with Host Client

Chapter 3 – Virtual and Physical Networking

• vNetwork standard virtual Switches
• Virtual switch Ports and Port Groups
• Creating and configuring VMkernel NICs for ESXi networking
• vSwitch pNIC teaming for performance and reliability

 Chapter 4 – Advanced Virtual Networking

• vNetwork security policies Promiscuous Mode, MAC Address Changes and Forged Transmits
• The 5 pNIC teaming policies – their pros, cons, use cases and best practices
• Configure Jumbo Frames for higher vNetwork throughput

Chapter 5 – Connecting to and Using NAS Shared Storage

• Shared Storage benefits
• NFS Overview
• Configuring ESXi to use NFS shares
• NFS Use Cases
• Troubleshooting NFS common problems

Chapter 6 – Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines

• VM virtual hardware, options and maximums
• Sizing and creating a new VM
• Assigning, modifying and removing Virtual Hardware
• VMware remote console applications
• Installing an OS into a VM
• Adding VMware Tools to a VM
• Saving and restoring a VM’s state with snapshots

Chapter 7 – vCenter Server Appliance

• vCenter overview and components
• Installing and configuring vCenter Server Appliance
• Complete post-install configuration tasks using vCSA’s VAMI interface
• Connecting vCenter’s base Linux Photon OS to Active Directory
• Updating Single Sign On’s directory source database to query Active Directory
• Organizing vCenter's inventory views
• Importing ESX hosts into vCenter management
• Administering vCenter Server with HTML 5 based vSphere Client

Chapter 8 – VM Rapid Deployment using Templates, Clones

• Virtual Machine Golden Master rapid deployment using templates
• Creating, updating and working with Templates
• Rapid ad-hoc VM duplication using Cloning
• Best practices for cloning and templating

Chapter 9 – Content Libraries

• Create and configure a new Content Library
• Upload a VM template to a Content Library
• Deploy a new VM from a template in a Content Library
• Upload and use media and other files from a Content Library

Chapter 10 – VM Hotplug Virtual Hardware

• Update VM vHardware with no downtime with hotplug virtual hardware
• Configuring VMs to support hotplug vCPUs and vRAM
• Hot-plugging vNICs and vDisks into a running VM
• Windows Guest OS experience when hot-pluging virtual hardware

 Chapter 11 – Working with Shared Storage

• Fibre SAN overview
• World Wide Names and LUN identifiers
• Fibre Soft Zoning and Hard Zoning
• iSCSI overview
• Virtual and physical iSCSI storage adapters
• Configuring ESXi’s iSCSI software adaptor
• Scanning and rescanning for iSCSI volumes
• Performance and redundancy considerations
• Storage and storage network design and best practices
• Understanding the capabilities and benefits of VMware VAAI compliant storage

 Chapter 12 – Raw Device Maps

• Direct VM to SAN LUN access with Raw Device Maps
• Raw Device Maps benefits and use cases
• Using Raw Device Maps in Windows Fail Over Clusters
• The impact of VM Migration on VMs with Raw Device Maps

Chapter 13 – VMware File System (VMFS)

• VMFS 6 features and benefits
• Creating new VMFS datastores
• Managing VMFS capacity with LUN spanning and LUN expansion
• Native and 3rd party Multipathing including policies, benefits and use cases
• VMFS performance, design and configuration tips

 Chapter 14 – ESXi and vCenter Permission Model

• · The ESXi and vCenter Security model
• · Configuring local users and groups
• Managing local permissions
• Granting access to local and Active Directory based users and groups
• How permissions are applied

Chapter 15 – Infrastructure Monitoring with vCenter Alarms

• Alarm categories and definitions
• Creating custom alarms and setting alarm actions
• Configure vCenter so it can send E-mail and SNMP alerts
• Reviewing existing alarms and acknowledging them
• Identify the most useful alarms to review and enable

Chapter 16 – Resource Management and Resource Pools

• Delegate compute resources in bulk with Resource Pools
• How ESXi delivers compute resources to VMs
• Compute resource tunes - Shares, Reservations and Limits
• Configure and test predictable compute resource delegations

Chapter 17 – VMotion Migration, Cold Migration, Storage VMotion

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

Chapter 18 – Distributed Resource Scheduling Clusters

• Automatic CPU and Memory resource balancing clusters with VMware DRS
• DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
• Per-VM cluster policy overrides
• Features, benefits and use cases for Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC)
• Configuring Per-VM EVC

Chapter 19 – VM Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters

• High Availability options to minimize unplanned VM down time due to infrastructure issues
• VMware HA policies to protect against ESXi host, storage network and SAN volume failures
• Admission Control for guaranteed compute resource availability after a host failure
• Heartbeat Datastores to quickly resolve host isolation vs. host failure situations

Chapter 20 – Fault Tolerance

• Deliver zero VM unplanned down time with Fault Tolerance
• The features, benefits and limitations of Fault Tolerant protected VMs
• Build your Fault Tolerance logging network
• Enable and test Fault Tolerance operations including testing ESXi host failures

Chapter 21 – VMware Lifecycle Manager

• Configure and enable VMware Lifecycle Manager
• Create an ESXi host upgrade baseline
• Checking ESXi host compliance with attached host upgrade baselines
• How to upgrade ESXi 7.0 hosts to ESXi 8.0 using VLM

Chapter 22 – vNetwork Distributed Virtual Switches

• Create and Configure a vNetwork Distributed virtual switch
• Migrate VMkernel networking to your dvSwitch
• Migrate VM networking and unused pNICs to your dvSwitch
• Why Management Networking should remain on a Standard vSwitch

Chapter 23 – Managing Scalability and Performance

• VMkernel CPU and memory resource management mechanisms
• Tuning VM storage I/O performance
• Identifying and resolving resource contention issues
• Monitoring VM and ESX host performance
• Performance and capacity planning strategies

Chapter 24 – Final Thoughts

• What to virtualize and what not to virtualize
• VM guest OS security in a virtual environment
• How to protect VMs and their data from unauthorized copying
• Useful books, white papers and online resources

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