About this Course

VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage is our best-selling course. It features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere® 6, which includes VMware ESXi™ 6 and VMware vCenter Server™ 6. This course will give you a solid understanding of how to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size. 

Audience Profile

• System administrators
• Systems engineers 

At Course Completion

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

• Describe the software-defined data center
• Deploy an ESXi host and create virtual machines
• Describe vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy a vCenter Server instance or VMware vCenter Server™ Appliance™
• Use vCenter Server to manage an ESXi host
• Configure and manage vSphere infrastructure with VMware vSphere® Client™ and VMware vSphere® Web Client
• Configure virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
• Use vCenter Server to manage various types of host storage
• Manage virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Create a vApp
• Describe and use the content library
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion®
• Use VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® to migrate virtual machine storage
• Monitor resource usage and manage resource pools 
• Use VMware vRealize™ Operations Manager™ to identify and solve issues through analytics and alerts
• Manage VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance
• Use VMware vSphere® Replication™ and VMware vSphere® Data Protection™ to replicate virtual machines and perform data recovery
• Use VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™ clusters to improve host scalability
• Use vSphere distributed switches to improve network scalability
• Use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply patches
• Perform basic troubleshooting of ESXi hosts, virtual machines, and vCenter Server operations.  

Prerequisites

• System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems
• Understanding of concepts presented in the VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals course for VCA-DCV certification 

Course Outline

Lesson 1: Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

Lesson 2: Software-Defined Data Center

• Introduce components of the software-defined data center
• Describe where vSphere fits into the cloud architecture
• Install and use vSphere Client
• Overview of ESXi

Lesson 3: Creating Virtual Machines

• Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Create and work with virtual machines

Lesson 4: vCenter Server

• Introduce the vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Install and use vSphere Web Client
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses
• Explain the benefits of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility

Lesson 5: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Describe, create, and manage standard switches
• Describe and modify standard switch properties
• Configure virtual switch load-balancing algorithms
• Create, configure, and manage vSphere distributed switches, network connections, and port groups

Lesson 6: Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

• Introduce storage protocols and storage device names
• Discuss ESXi with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS datastores
• Introduce VMware Virtual SAN™

Lesson 7: Virtual Machine Management

• Use templates and cloning to deploy virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Create a vApp
• Introduce the various types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them

Lesson 8: Resource Management and Monitoring

• Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Use vCenter Server performance graphs and alarms to monitor resource usage
• Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events
• Introduce vRealize Operations Manager for data center monitoring and management

Lesson 9: vSphere HA and vSphere Fault Tolerance

• Explain the vSphere HA architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters
• Introduce vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines
• Introduce vSphere Replication
• Use vSphere Data Protection to back up and restore data

Lesson 10: Host Scalability

• Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure and manage a vSphere DRS cluster
• Work with affinity and anti-affinity rules
• Use vSphere HA and vSphere DRS together

Lesson 11: vSphere Update Manager and Host Maintenance

• Use vSphere Update Manager to manage ESXi patching
• Install vSphere Update Manager and the vSphere Update Manager plug-in
• Create patch baselines
• Use host profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
• Scan and remediate hosts

Lesson 12: Installing VMware Components

• Introduce ESXi installation
• Describe boot-from-SAN requirements
• Introduce vCenter Server deployment options
• Describe vCenter Server hardware, software, and database requirements
• Discuss installation of vCenter Server Appliance and a vCenter Server instance