About this Course

This course for experienced users of VMware® vSphere® teaches skills in the use of VMware® vCenter™ Operations Manager™ as a forensic and predictive tool. The course is based on VMware ESXi™ 5.x, VMware® vCenter Server™ 5.x, and vCenter Operations Manager 5.x.

At Course Completion

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

• Understand major and minor badges and their underlying metrics.
• Use these badges to find the root causes of common operational issues in a vSphere environment.
• Perform capacity management and what-if analyses.
• Use the Operations tab, the Planning tab, the Alerts tab, the
• Navigate the vCenter Operations Manager 5.0 user interface.
• Use heat maps and create a custom heat map.
• Use smart alerts to detect system issues.
• Articulate the use case for the new policy structure in vCenter Operations Manager and how it can be used to define configuration settings for objects in a vSphere environment.
• Work with groups to classify virtual objects in logical and business-related structures and how to apply them to policies.
• Define new use cases based on the optimized integration with VMware® vCenter™ Operations Management Suite™ products like VMware® vCenter Configuration Manager™, VMware® vFabric™ Hyperic®, VMware® vCenter™ Infrastructure Navigator™, and other adapters.

Prerequisites

• Hands-on experience administering vSphere 5 deployments
• Completion of VMware vSchere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5] recommended

Course Outline

1. Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2. Introduction to VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite

• Understand the role of operations management in the cloud era
• Understand the vCenter Operations Management Suite andits packaging

3. Architecture and Concepts

• Understand the data collection methodology of the vCenter Operations Manager architecture
• Learn how vCenter Operations Manager collects data
• Master the main components of the dashboard view
• Navigate the objects tree and understand the badge pane

4. Working with Dashboards and Badges

• Understand the functions of major and minor badges
• Use the Health major badge
• Use the Risk major badge
• Use the Efficiency major badge
• Use the Operations tab to navigate to details

5. Analyzing with Heat Maps

• Work with predefined and custom heat maps through the Analysis tab

6. Working with Smart Alerts

• Configure and use smart alerts
• Set up email notifications

7. Working with Capacity Planning and Reports

• Schedule, use, and export predefined capacity management reports
• Perform what-if analyses

8. Installing and Configuring VMware vCenter Operations Manager

• Understand and meet preinstallation requirements
• Install vCenter Operations Manager
• Configure vCenter Operations Manager to gather data from its environment

A. VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite Update

• Discuss the VMware management suite solution and products
• List the key components and capabilities of vCenter Operations Management Suite
• Describe the main features available in each of the vCenter Operations Management Suite products and editions  

B. VMware vCenter Operations Manager v5.6 Changes

• Discuss configuration of policies and groups
• Identify basic use cases and benefits from using policies and groups
• Make changes to the vCenter Operations Manager 5.6 configurations
• Explain changes to badges, metrics, and reports in version 5.6 of vCenter Operations Manager

C. Integration with Other VMware Products

• Identify use cases for the integration of additional vCenter Operations Management Suite products
• Discuss integration with vCenter Operations Manager for group management
• Learn about new dashboard badges in vCenter Operations Manager