Experienced system administrators and system integrators willing to work hard to achieve superior vSphere skills with minimal time away from the office.

At the end of the course, you should be able to do the following:

• Configure and manage ESXi networking and storage.
• Create, configure, migrate, manage, convert, and monitor virtual machines and virtual appliances.
• Manage user access to the virtual infrastructure.
• Use vCenter Server to monitor resource usage.
• Scale the vSphere virtual infrastructure.
• Implement business continuity solutions.
• Manage changes to the vSphere environment.
• Use a command-line interface to manage vSphere.
• Install and configure ESXi and vCenter Server.
• Use vSphere Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts.

1. Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2. Introduction to VMware Virtualization

• Introduce virtualization, virtual machines, and vSphere components
• Explain the concepts of server, network, and storage virtualization
• Describe where vSphere fits into the cloud architecture
• Install and use vSphere user interfaces

3. Create Virtual Machines

• Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Deploy a single virtual machine

4. VMware vCenter Server

• Introduce vCenter Server architecture
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses

5. Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Describe, create, and manage a standard virtual switch
• Describe and modify standard virtual switch properties
• Configure virtual switch load-balancing algorithms

6. Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

• Introduce storage protocols and device names
• Configure ESXi with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage vSphere datastores
• Introduce VMware vSphere® Storage Appliance

7. Virtual Machine Management

• Use templates and cloning to deploy virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Perform VMware vSphere® vMotion® and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create a vSphere vApp

8. Access and Authentication Control

• Control user access through roles and permissions
• Configure and manage the ESXi firewall
• Configure ESXi lockdown mode
• Integrate ESXi with Active Directory
• Introduce VMware® vShield Zones

9. Resource Management and Monitoring

• Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Use vCenter Server performance graphs and alarms to monitor resource usage

10. High Availability and Fault Tolerance

• Introduce new vSphere High Availability architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Introduce vSphere Fault Tolerance

11. Host Scalability

• Use Host Profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
• Configure and manage a vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler cluster
• Configure and manage vSphere Distributed Power Management

12. Network Scalability

• Create, configure, and manage vNetwork distributed switches,network connections, and port groups

13. Storage Scalability

• Introduce Storage I/O Control
• Describe VMware vSphere® Storage APIs - Array Integration and VASA
• Explain policy-driven storage
• Add a storage policy to a virtual machine storage profile
• Describe Storage DRS operation
• Create a datastore cluster for Storage DRS
• Configure Storage DRS

14. Data Protection

• Discuss a strategy for backing up ESXi hosts and vCenter Server
• Introduce the VMware Data Recovery appliance
• Discuss solutions for backing up virtual machines efficiently

15. Patch Management

• Use VMware vSphere® vCenter Update Manager to manage ESXi patching
• Install Update Manager and the Update Manager plug-in
• Create patch baselines
• Scan and remediate hosts

16. VMware vSphere Management Assistant

• Describe VMware vSphere® Management Assistant (vMA)
• Configure vMA
• Discuss the esxcli and vicfg commands
• Perform command-line operations for host management,network management, storage management, and performance monitoring

17.Installing VMware Components

• Use vCenter Linked Mode to manage multiple vCenter Server inventories
• Introduce ESXi installation
• Describe boot-from-SAN requirements
• Describe vCenter Server hardware, software, and database requirements
• Install vCenter Server (Windows-based)
• Introduce VMware vCenter Server Appliance