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
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