Summary:
- Formats: Classroom, Live Online, vFlex-ILT, Onsite
- Length: 5 Days
Overview:
This training course, for experienced VMware vSphere® personnel, teaches advanced skills for configuring and maintaining a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. The course is based on VMware vSphere® ESXi™ 5.0 and VMware® vCenter Server™ 5.1.
This course prepares the student for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Datacenter Administration [V5] certification (VCAP5-DCA). Completion of this course also satisfies the prerequisite for taking the VMware Certified Professional 5 exam.
Objectives:
• Configure and manage ESXi networking and storage for a large and sophisticated enterprise.
• Manage changes to the vSphere environment.
• Optimize the performance of all vSphere components.
• Troubleshoot operational faults and identify their root causes.
• Use VMware vSphere® ESXi™ Shell and VMware vSphere® Management Assistant (vMA) to manage vSphere.
• Use VMware vSphere® Auto Deploy™ to provision ESXi hosts.
Note: About one-third of the VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.1] course content is repeated in this course. The scalability topics in VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V5.1] are repeated in this course.
Intended Audience:
Experienced system administrators and system integrators
Prerequisites:
Completion of one of the following courses:
• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.1]
• VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.1]
• VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V5.1]
Or equivalent knowledge and administration experience with ESXi and vCenter Server
Experience working at the command prompt is highly recommended.
Outline:
1 Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives
2 VMware Management Resources
• Configure vMA
• Understand the esxcli and vicfg commands
• Configure ESXi technical support mode and SSH access
• Understand important ESXi and vCenter Server log files
3 Performance in a Virtualized Environment
• Understand the vSphere performance troubleshooting methodology
• Understand software and hardware virtualization techniques and their effects on performance
• Use vSphere performance monitoring tools
4 Network Scalability
• Create, configure, and manage vSphere distributed switches
• Migrate virtual machines from standard switches to distributed switches
• Understand distributed switch features such as PVLANs, VMware vSphere® Network I/O Control, port mirroring, and NetFlow
5 Network Optimization
• Understand performance features of network adapters
• Understand performance features of vSphere networking
• Monitor key network performance metrics
• Use vMA to manage virtual network configuration
• Troubleshoot common network performance problems
6 Storage Scalability
• Configure storage multipathing
• Understand vSphere storage APIs for array integration and storage awareness
• Explain profile-driven storage
• Add a storage policy to a virtual machine storage profile
• Describe VMware vSphere® Storage DRS™ operation
• Configure Storage DRS and VMware vSphere® Storage I/O Control
7 Storage Optimization
• Diagnose storage access problems
• Understand how storage protocols, VMware vSphere® VMFS configuration, load balancing, and queuing affect performance
• Monitor key storage performance metrics
• Use vMA to manage virtual storage
• Troubleshoot common storage performance problems
8 CPU Optimization
• Understand CPU scheduler and other features that affect CPU performance
• Monitor key CPU performance metrics
• Troubleshoot common CPU performance problems
9 Memory Optimization
• Understand memory reclamation techniques and overcommitment
• Monitor key memory performance metrics
• Troubleshoot common memory performance problems
10 Virtual Machine and Cluster Optimization
• Understand performance guidelines for virtual machines, resource allocation settings, VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™ clusters, resource pools, and VMware vSphere® High Availability admission control policies
• Troubleshoot virtual machine power-on failures
• Troubleshoot vSphere cluster problems
11 Host and Management Scalability
• Understand how vCenter Linked Mode manages multiple vCenter Server inventories
• Explain VMware vSphere® Distributed Power Management™
• Use Host Profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
• Use VMware vSphere® PowerCLI™ to perform vSphere administrative tasks
• Use Image Builder to create an ESXi installation image
• Use vSphere Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts