VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage

Course Overview

LENGTH: 5 days

VERSION: 8.0

This course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere 8, which includes VMware ESXi 8 and VMware vCenter 8. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organisation of any size.

This course is the foundation for most VMware technologies in the software-defined data center.

Product Alignment:

• VMware ESXi 8.0
• VMware vCenter 8.0

What You'll Learn

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Install and configure ESXi hosts
• Deploy and configure vCenter
• Use the vSphere Client to create the vCenter inventory and assign roles to vCenter users
• Create virtual networks using vSphere standard switches and distributed switches
• Create and configure datastores using storage technologies supported by vSphere
• Create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Create content libraries for managing templates and deploying virtual machines
• Manage virtual machine resource allocation
• Migrate virtual machines with vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion
• Create and configure a vSphere cluster that is enabled with vSphere High Availability (HA) and vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
• Manage the life cycle of vSphere to keep vCenter, ESXi hosts, and virtual machines up to date

Course Subjects

1. Course Introduction

   • Introductions and course logistics
   • Course objectives

2. vSphere and Virtualisation Overview

   • Explain basic virtualisation concepts
   • Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
   • Recognise the user interfaces for accessing vSphere
   • Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, storage, and GPUs

3. Installing and Configuring ESXi

   • Install an ESXi host
   • Recognise ESXi user account best practices
   • Configure the ESXi host settings using the DCUI and VMware Host Client

4. Deploying and Configuring vCenter

   • Recognise ESXi hosts communication with vCenter
   • Deploy vCenter Server Appliance
   • Configure vCenter settings
   • Use the vSphere Client to add and manage license keys
   • Create and organise vCenter inventory objects
   • Recognise the rules for applying vCenter permissions
   • View vCenter logs and events

5. Configuring vSphere Networking

   • Configure and view standard switch configurations
   • Configure and view distributed switch configurations
   • Recognise the difference between standard switches and distributed switches
   • Explain how to set networking policies on standard and distributed switches

6. Configuring vSphere Storage

   • Recognise vSphere storage technologies
   • Identify types of vSphere datastores
   • Describe Fibre Channel components and addressing
   • Describe iSCSI components and addressing
   • Configure iSCSI storage on ESXi
   • Create and manage VMFS datastores
   • Configure and manage NFS datastores

7. Deploying Virtual Machines

   • Create and provision VMs
   • Explain the importance of VMware Tools
   • Identify the files that make up a VM
   • Recognise the components of a VM
   • Navigate the vSphere Client and examine VM settings and options
   • Modify VMs by dynamically increasing resources
   • Create VM templates and deploy VMs from them
   • Clone VMs
   • Create customisation specifications for guest operating systems
   • Create local, published, and subscribed content libraries
   • Deploy VMs from content libraries
   • Manage multiple versions of VM templates in content libraries

8. Managing Virtual Machines

   • Recognise the types of VM migrations that you can perform within a vCenter instance and across vCenter instances
   • Migrate VMs using vSphere vMotion
   • Describe the role of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility in migrations
   • Migrate VMs using vSphere Storage vMotion
   • Take a snapshot of a VM
   • Manage, consolidate, and delete snapshots
   • Describe CPU and memory concepts in relation to a virtualised environment
   • Describe how VMs compete for resources
   • Define CPU and memory shares, reservations, and limits

9. Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters

   • Create a vSphere cluster enabled for vSphere DRS and vSphere HA
   • View information about a vSphere cluster
   • Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster
   • Recognise use cases for vSphere DRS settings
   • Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster
   • Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures
   • Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster
   • Recognise vSphere HA design considerations
   • Recognise the use cases for various vSphere HA settings
   • Configure a vSphere HA cluster
   • Recognise when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance

10. Managing the vSphere Lifecycle

    • Enable vSphere Lifecycle Manager in a vSphere cluster
    • Describe features of the vCenter Update Planner
    • Run vCenter upgrade prechecks and interoperability reports
    • Recognise features of vSphere Lifecycle Manager
    • Distinguish between managing hosts using baselines and managing hosts using images
    • Describe how to update hosts using baselines
    • Describe ESXi images
    • Validate ESXi host compliance against a cluster image and update ESXi hosts
    • Update ESXi hosts using vSphere Lifecycle Manager
    • Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager automatic recommendations
    • Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware

Who is the Course For?

• System administrators
• Systems engineers

Prerequisites

This course requires the following prerequisites:

• System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

Testimonials

Lumify Work Customised Training

Lumify Work is the world leader in server virtualisation technologies. Lumify Work is a VMware Education Reseller Partner (VERP), offering training in vSphere, vRealize, vSAN, Horizon, NSX-T, Workspace ONE, Carbon Black, and other VMware technologies and platforms.

We can also deliver and customise this training course for larger groups saving your organisation time, money and resources.

For more information, please contact us on 02 8286 9429.