VMware vSphere: Fast Track v6.7

1 Course Introduction

Introductions and course logistics

Course objectives

Describe the content of this course

Gain a complete picture of the VMware certification system

Familiarize yourself with the benefits of the VMware Education Learning Zone

Identify additional resources

2 Introduction to vSphere and the Software Defined Data Center

Describe how vSphere fits into the software defined data center and the cloud infrastructure

Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, and storage

Use vSphere Client to access and manage your vCenter Server system and ESXi host

Compare virtual machine hardware version 14 to other versions

Identify the virtual network adapters, and describe the enhanced VMXNET3

Compare the types of virtual disk provisioning

Install and configure ESXi host settings

Identify the advantages of ESXi Quick Boot

3 Creating Virtual Machines

Create, provision, and remove a virtual machine

Explain the importance of VMware Tools™

Describe how to import a virtual appliance OVF template

4 vCenter Server

Describe the vCenter Server architecture

Discuss how ESXi hosts communicate with vCenter Server

Access and configure vCenter Server Appliance

Use vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory

Add data center, organizational objects, and hosts to vCenter Server

Create custom inventory tags

Describe the rules for applying permissions

Create a custom role in vCenter Server

Create a vCenter Server Appliance backup schedule

Restore vCenter Server Appliance from a backup

Monitor vCenter Server Appliance

5 Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

Describe, create, and manage standard switches

Configure virtual switch security, traffic-shaping and load-balancing policies

Compare vSphere distributed switches and standard switches

Describe the virtual switch connection types

Describe the new TCP/IP stack architecture

Use VLANs with standard switches

6 Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

Identify storage protocols and storage device types

Discuss ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage

Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS and NFS datastores

Explain how multipathing works with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage

Identify the advantages of VMware vSAN™

7 Virtual Machine Management

Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines

Modify and manage virtual machines

Create an instant clone of a virtual machine

Identify the types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them

Add a hot-pluggable device

Dynamically increase the size of a virtual disk

Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine

Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations

Create and manage virtual machine snapshots

8 Resource Management and Monitoring

Discuss CPU and memory concepts in a virtualized environment

Describe what overcommitment of a resource means

Identify additional technologies that improve memory usage

Configure and manage resource pools

Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage

Use various tools to monitor resource usage

Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events

9 vSphere HA, vSphere Fault Tolerance, and Protecting Data

Explain the vSphere HA architecture

Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster

Use vSphere HA advanced parameters

Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover

Describe vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats

Examine the features and functions of vSphere Fault Tolerance

Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines

Support vSphere Fault Tolerance interoperability with vSAN

Examine enhanced consolidation of vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machines

Examine the features and functions of vSphere Replication

10 vSphere DRS

Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster

Create a vSphere DRS cluster

View information about a vSphere DRS cluster

Configure virtual machine affinity, DRS groups, and VM-host affinity rules

Remove a host from a vSphere DRS cluster

11 Network Scalability

Configure and manage vSphere distributed switches

Explain distributed features such as port mirroring, LACP, QoS tagging, and NetFlow

Configuring port mirroring on a distributed switch

12 vSphere Update Manager and Host Maintenance

Describe the architecture, components, and capabilities of vSphere Update Manager

Use vSphere Update Manager to manage the patching of ESXi, virtual machines, and vApps

Examine the features and functions of vSphere Update Manager EAM integration

Integrate vSphere Update Manager with vSphere DRS

Describe and use host profiles

13 Storage Scalability

Explain VMware vSphere® Storage APIs - Array Integration, VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness™, and vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering

Configure and assign virtual machine storage policies

Configure vSphere Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control

14 Securing Virtual Machines

Set up encryption in your vSphere environment

Encrypt virtual machines

Encrypt core dumps

Enable encrypted vSphere vMotion

Describe support for virtual machine security features, such as UEFI secure boot, vTPM, and virtualization-based security

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

Install and configure ESXi hosts

Deploy and configure VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™

Use VMware Host Client™, VMware vSphere® Web Client, and VMware vSphere® Client™ to manage the vCenter Server inventory and the vCenter Server configuration

Create virtual networks with vSphere standard switches

Describe the storage technologies supported by vSphere

Configure virtual storage using iSCSI and NFS storage

Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS datastores

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

Create a content library for deploying virtual machines

Manage virtual machine resource usage and manage resource pools

Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®  Describe the methods for protecting and recovering virtual machine data

Create and manage a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™

Create virtual networks with VMware vSphere® Distributed Switch™ and enable distributed switch features  Use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply patches and perform upgrades to ESXi hosts and virtual machines

Use host profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance

Describe how vSphere storage APIs help storage systems integrate with vSphere

Configure and use virtual machine storage policies

Configure VMware vSphere® Storage I/O Control and VMware vSphere® Storage DRS™

Encrypt virtual machines for additional security

System administrators

System engineers