Course Detail

Course Audience

• System administrators
• System engineers

Course Outline

Module 1: Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics 
• Course objectives

Module 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 

Module 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 

Module 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

Module 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  

Module 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

Module 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    

Module 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

Module 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

Module 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 VMware vSphere® Lifecycle ManagerTM 
• 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

Course Completion

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• 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 VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®
• Create and configure a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™
• Manage the life cycle of vSphere to keep vCenter, ESXi hosts, and virtual machines up to date

Course Prerequisites

this course has the following prerequisites:

• System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems