VMware vSphere 5.1: 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

This course is part of the following Certifications:

• VMware Certified Professional 5 - Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV)

• 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