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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

How to Install, Configure ESXi 5.5 Installable

• Understanding ESXi
• Selecting, validating and preparing your server
• Storage controllers, disks and partitions
• Software installation and best practices
• Joining ESXi to a Domain
• First look at the VMware vSphere Client

 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

 NAS Shared Storage

• Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
• Shared Storage options
• NFS Overview
• Configuring ESX to use NFS Shares
• Troubleshooting NFS connections

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

vCenter Server and the Next Generation Web Client

• The need for Identity Source management
• Installing and configuring the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA)
• Connecting to Active Directory and other identity sources
• vCenter feature overview, components and licensing
• Organizing vCenter’s inventory views
• Importing ESX hosts into vCenter management
• Installing and Using the vSphere Next Generation vSphere Client (NGC)

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

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

 Using Fiber and iSCSI Shared Storage

• Fiber SAN overview
• Identifying and using Fiber Host Bus Adapters
• Scanning and Rescanning Fiber SANs
• iSCSI overview
• Virtual and physical iSCSI adapters
• Connecting to iSCSI storage
• Scanning and rescanning iSCSI SANS
• Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices

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 Fiber and iSCSI SANs
• VMFS performance considerations

Resource Management and Resource Pools

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

ESX and vCenter Alarms

• Alarm categories and definitions
• Creating custom alarms and actions
• Reviewing alarms and acknowledging them

Host Profiles

• Using Host Profiles to capture an ESXi host configuration
• Perform configuration compliance scans
• Remediating out of compliance configuration issues
• Rapid ESXi host deployment/configuration with Host Profiles

Consolidation with vCenter 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

Back Up, Recovery with VMware Data Recovery

• Pro’s and Cons of traditional back up strategies
• Backing up VMs with VMware Data Recovery
• Backing and restoring your ESXi server configuration
• Third party VM backup solutions

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

Load Balancing w. Distributed Resource Scheduler

• Delegated resource management with Resource Pools
• Resource balanced clusters with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
• DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
• Per-VM cluster policy overrides

Failure Recovery with High Availability Clusters

• High Availability options to minimize unplanned down time
• VMware High Availability clusters
• VMware Fault Tolerance

Chapter 19: Patch Management with VMware Update Manager

• Configure and enable VMware Update Manager
• Establishing a patch baseline
• Verifying compliance and patching ESXi hosts

VMware Replication

• Establishing Time to Recovery requirements
• Overview of SAN LUN replication and VMware Site Recovery Manager
• Installing and configuring VMware Replication for individual VM replication
• Replicating a VM
• Recovering a replicated VM

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

Final Thoughts

• Consolidation guidelines for VMs and Storage
• Determining which workloads to consolidate
• Other considerations