VMware vSphere Skills for Operators (VSO)

System administrators, systems engineers, and help desk personnel who need the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform advanced troubleshooting of their vSphere deployments.

This is an advanced course. Required prerequisites include the completion of one of the following:

• Completion of the following three courses:
  VMware vSphere 5: Install, Configure, Manage (VICM), VMware vSphere: Manage Availability (VMA) and VMware vSphere: Manage Scalability (VMS)
• Completion of VMware vSphere: Fast Track.
• Equivalent knowledge and administration experience with ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server

This lab-intensive course focuses on providing system administrators with the advanced knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the VMware vSphere™ virtual infrastructure. In this course, you will spend most of the time diagnosing and rectifying configuration problems created on VMware® ESX™/ESXi hosts and VMware vCenter™ Server systems. Upon completion of this course, you can take the examination to become a VMware Certified Professional.

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

• Use the VMware vSphere Client and service console commands to configure or diagnose and rectify problems on ESX
• Use the vSphere Client and the VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) appliance to configure or diagnose and rectify problems on ESX and ESXi hosts
• Use ESXi technical support mode to diagnose and rectify problems on ESXi
• Create and use a network sniffer to capture and display virtual switch network traffic
• Use the vSphere Client and command-line tools to troubleshoot VMware VMotion™, VMware Storage VMotion, VMware High Availability, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler, and virtual machine power-on problems

• Module 1: Course Introduction
• Module 2: ESXi Command-Line Troubleshooting Methods
  • Install and use the vMA
  • Learn common vSphere Command-Line Interface commands and syntax
  • Configure ESXi technical support mode and SSH access
• Module 3: ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server Log Files
  • View ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server log files
  • Configure a centralized ESX/ESXi log host
• Module 4: Network Troubleshooting
  • Identify and configure vNetwork components
  • Configure and use a network traffic sniffer
• Module 5: Management Troubleshooting
  • Troubleshoot vSphere management components
• Module 6: Storage Troubleshooting
  • View, configure, and diagnose storage access problems
  • Configure iSCSI authentication and digests
• Module 7: vMotion Troubleshooting
  • Troubleshoot VMotion and Storage VMotion errors
• Module 8: VMware Infrastructure Troubleshooting
  • Troubleshoot DRS Cluster errors with shares, pools, and limits
  • Troubleshoot HA Cluster errors with slot calculations, admission control, and host monitoring
  • Review virtual machine power on requirements
  • Troubleshoot virtual machine power on failures
• Module 9: vSphere 4 DRS Cluster Troubleshooting
  • Complete a final multihour, multiproblem troubleshooting exercise