VMware vSphere: Fast Track 6.5

Course Description

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This extended hours, five-day course features intensive, hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, managing, and troubleshooting VMware vSphere® 6.5, which includes VMware ESXi™ 6.5 and VMware vCenter Server® 6.5. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size. It is the foundation for most other VMware technologies in the software-defined data center. The material is presented in the Fast Track format.

Audience Profile

System administrators
Systems engineers

Prerequisite(s) Recommended

This course requires the following prerequisites:
System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

Learning Objectives

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

• Describe the software-defined data center
• Explain the vSphere components and their function in the infrastructure
• Deploy an ESXi host
• Deploy VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™
• Use a local content library as an ISO store and deploy a virtual machine
• Describe vCenter Server architecture
• Use vCenter Server to manage an ESXi host
• Configure and manage vSphere infrastructure with VMware Host Client™ and VMware vSphere® Web Client
• Troubleshoot vSphere environments with VMware vSphere® Management Assistant and command-line commands
• Describe virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
• Configure standard switch policies
• Troubleshoot virtual networks
• Use vCenter Server to manage various types of host storage: VMware vSphere® VMFS, NFS, iSCSI, and RDM
• Examine the features and functions of Fibre Channel and VMware vSAN™
• Manage virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Create, clone, and deploy a vApp
• Describe and use the content library
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion®
• Troubleshoot virtual machines
• Use VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® to migrate virtual machine storage
• Troubleshoot vSphere storage

Course Outline

Module 1: Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives
• Describe the content of this course
• Gain a complete picture of the VMware certification system
• Familiarize yourself with the benefits of the VMware Education Learning Zone
• Identify additional resources

Module 2: Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center
• Describe the topology of a physical data center
• Explain the vSphere virtual infrastructure
• Define the files and components of virtual machines
• Describe the benefits of using virtual machines
• Explain the similarities and differences between physical architectures and virtual architectures
• Define the purpose of ESXi
• Define the purpose of vCenter Server
• Explain the software-defined data center
• Describe private, public, and hybrid clouds

Module 3: Creating Virtual Machines
• Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Identify the files that make up a virtual machine
• Discuss the latest virtual machine hardware and its features
• Describe virtual machine CPU, memory, disk, and network resource usage
• Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
• Discuss PCI pass-through, Direct I/O, remote direct memory access, and NVMe
• Deploy and configure virtual machines and templates
• Identify the virtual machine disk format

Module 4: vCenter Server
• Introduce the vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use vSphere Web Client
• Back up and restore vCenter Server
• Examine vCenter Server permissions and roles
• Explain the vSphere HA architectures and features
• Examine the new vSphere authentication proxy
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses
• Access and navigate the new vSphere clients

Module 5: Troubleshooting vSphere
• Use command-line commands with vSphere
• Use vSphere Management Assistant
• Describe the troubleshooting methodology for vSphere
• Identify the location of vSphere log files

Module 6: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
• Describe, create, and manage standard switches
• Configure virtual switch security and load-balancing policies
• Compare and contrast vSphere distributed switches and standard switches
• Describe the virtual switch connection types
• Describe the new TCP/IP stack architecture
• Use VLANs with standard switches
• Troubleshoot networks

Module 7: Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage
• Identify storage protocols and storage device types
• Discuss ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage VMFS and NFS datastores
• Describe the new features of VMFS6.5
• Describe guest file encryption
• Describe storage connectivity and configuration
• Describe storage multipathing
• Discuss the use of vSAN and VMware vSphere® Virtual Volumes™

Module 8: Virtual Machine Management
• Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Clone a virtual machine
• Upgrade virtual machine hardware to version 13
• Remove virtual machines from the vCenter Server inventory and datastore
• Customize a new virtual machine using customization specification files
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Identify the types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them

Module 9: Resource Management and Monitoring
• Explain virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Explain virtual memory reclamation techniques
• Describe virtual machine overcommitment and resource competition
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Use various tools to monitor resource usage
• Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events
• Describe and deploy resource pools
• Set reservations, limits, and shares
• Describe expandable reservations
• Schedule changes to resource settings
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Use vCenter Server performance charts and esxtop to analyze vSphere performance
• Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi hosts

Module 10: vSphere HA, vSphere Fault Tolerance, and Protecting Data
• Explain the vSphere HA architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters
• Define clusterwide restart ordering capabilities
• Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover
• Describe vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats
• Introduce vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines
• Support vSphere Fault Tolerance interoperability with vSAN
• Examine enhanced consolidation of vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machines
• Introduce vSphere Replication
• Use vSphere Data Protection to back up and restore data
• Troubleshoot vSphere HA

Module 11: vSphere DRS
• Describe the functions and benefits of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure and manage a vSphere DRS cluster
• Work with affinity and anti-affinity rules
• Describe the new capabilities for what-if analysis and Predictive DRS
• Describe the evolution of vSphere DRS using predictive data from VMware vRealize® Operations Manager™
• Perform preemptive actions to prepare for CPU or memory changes
• Describe the vCenter Server embedded vSphere Update Manager, VMware vSphere® ESXi™ Image Builder CLI, and VMware vSphere® Auto Deploy™ capabilities
• Use vSphere HA and vSphere DRS together for business continuity
• Troubleshoot vSphere DRS

Module 12: vSphere Update Manager
• Describe the new vSphere Update Manager architecture, components, and capabilities
• Use vSphere Update Manager to manage the patching of ESXi, virtual machines, and vApps
• Install vSphere Update Manager and the vSphere Update Manager plug-in
• Create patch baselines
• Use host profiles to manage host configuration compliance
• Scan and remediate hosts