VMware vSphere 5: Fast Track (VVFT)

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

• Willingness to participate in a demanding, high-intensity training experience
• Comfort with system administration using command-line interfaces
• Have a basic understanding of virtualization concepts

This intensive, extended-hours training course focuses on installing, configuring, managing, and troubleshooting VMware® vSphere™. It combines the content of the VMware vSphere 4: Install, Configure, Manage course with advanced tasks and skills for configuring a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. Upon completing this course, you can take the examination to qualify as a VMware Certified Professional. You will learn:

• 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 VMware vSphere® Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts.

Module 1: Course Introduction

Module 2: Introduction to VMware Virtualization

• Introduce virtualization 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
• Describe the ESXi architecture and configure various ESXi settings

Module 3: Creating Virtual Machines

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

Module 4: VMware vCenter Server

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

Module 5: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Describe, create, and manage a standard virtual switch
• Describe and modify standard virtual switch properties

Module 6: Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

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

Module 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
• Use VMware vCenter Converter™ Standalone to hot-clone a system

Module 8: Access and Authentication Control

• Control user access through roles and permissions
• Discuss ESXi host access and authentication
• Integrate ESXi with Active Directory
• Introduce VMware® vShield™ products

Module 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

Module 10: High Availability and Fault Tolerance

• Explain the vSphere High Availability (HA) architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Introduce vSphere Fault Tolerance

Module 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

Module 12: Network Scalability

• Create, configure, and manage vNetwork distributed switches, network connections, and port groups
• Discuss distributed virtual switch features, such as PVLANs, discovery protocols, Network I/O Control, NetFlow, and port mirroring

Module 13: Storage Scalability

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

Module 14: Data Protection

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

Module 15: Patch Management

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

Module 16: VMware vSphere Management Assistant

• Describe VMware vSphere® Management Assistant (vMA)
• Configure vMA
• Discuss the VMware vSphere® Command-Line Interface command set
• Perform command-line operations for host management, network management, storage management, and performance monitoring

Module 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 vCenter Server Appliance
• Install and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use Image Builder to create an ESXi installation image
• Use Auto Deploy to deploy a stateless ESXi host