VMware vSphere with ESX 4 and vCenter 4

T: +44 (0)1952 460551 F: +44 (0)1952 461012 E:reception@hostcomputers.co.uk

VMware

Increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your IT operations with VMware Training. Virtualisation with VMware ESX and VirtualCenter made easy at HOST

Course Title: VMware vSphere with ESX 4 and vCenter 4

Course Number: P401

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Course Overview:

This class is a 5-day (optional 4-day) intense introduction to virtualization using VMware’s immensely popular vSphere™ suite including VMware ESX™ 4 and vCenter™ 4. Assuming no prior virtualization experience, this class starts with the basics and rapidly progresses to more advanced topics. More than 40% of class time is devoted to labs so concepts and skills are reinforced.

Initial labs focus on installation and configuration of stand-alone ESX servers. As the class progresses, shared storage, networking and centralized management are introduced. The class then continues on to more advanced topics including resource balancing, high availability, back up and recovery, troubleshooting and more. Disaster recovery, rapid deployment, hot migration and workload consolidation are also covered.

This class is unique in its approach; which is to identify common IT pain points and then clearly explain and demonstrate how virtualization delivers immediate, tangible benefits (e.g.: reduced capital and operational costs, greater consistency, responsiveness, reduced administration, server consolidation, etc.). Each topic is presented from the perspective of delivering key business and/or economic value – not just the technical or mechanical aspects of the software.

By the end of the class, attendees will have learned the benefits, skills, mechanics and best practices of virtualization. Attendees will be able to design, implement, deploy, configure, monitor, manage, troubleshoot and secure VMware vSphere 4.

Audience:

System architects or others who need to design virtual infrastructure
Senior administrators responsible for technical design and implementation of new Virtual Infrastructure projects
Security specialists responsible for monitor, managing, securing and administering Virtual Infrastructure
Operators responsible for day-to-day operation of Virtual Infrastructure
Performance and capacity analysts who need to understand, provision, monitor and performance tune Virtual Infrastructure
Backup Administrators who need to understand the impact of existing and new back up strategies in a virtual environment
Business Continuity specialists responsible for disaster recovery and high availability
Storage administrators who need to understand how Virtual Infrastructure sees and uses Fibre SAN and iSCSI SAN volumes and NAS datastores
VMware customers and prospects who want to learn how to extract the maximum benefit from their investment in Virtual Infrastructure
Managers who need an unbiased understanding of virtualization before committing their organization to a virtual infrastructure deployment.

The Virtualization with VMware ESX 4 & VirtualCenter 4 day course at HOST covers the same material and skills as VMware's own Install and config course, with the addition of an optional 1 day advanced topics.

Benefits:

Attending this course at HOST offers some significant benefits.

1. One dedicated ESX Server per delegate.

2. Small class size for better knowledge transfer.

3. "Real world" approach to the subject of virtualisation.

4. Attending this course would prepare delegates to achieve certification if they attend an advanced VMware course at a later date.

Prerequisites:

User, operator, or administrator experience on common operating systems such as Microsoft Windows®, Linux™, UNIX™ or other platforms. Experience installing, configuring and managing operating systems, storage systems and or networks is useful but not required. We assume that all attendees have a basic familiarity with PC server hardware, disk partitioning, IP addressing, O/S installation, etc. No Linux command line skills are assumed or required.

Objectives

On completion of this course the delegate will be able to:

Explain the many significant benefits of virtualization
Install ESX Server according to best practices
Configure and manage local storage
Create virtual, distributed virtual, and virtual to physical LAN segments
Understand and use shared SAN storage including Fibre SAN, iSCSI SAN
Define and use NAS datastores
Install, configure and administer VMware vCenter
Create virtual machines, install operating systems and applications
Rapidly deployment of VMs using golden-master templates
Create clones - one-time copies of virtual machine
Perform VM cold migrations, hot migrations and Storage VMotion
Configure, manage, monitor and secure users and groups
Understand the benefits and trade offs of network, SAN, VMware Consolidated Back Up and third party back up solutions
Create and manage load balanced clusters
Understand, create and manage high availability clusters to protect against VM service loss caused by ESX server failures
Monitor and tune both ESX and virtual machine performance
Patch management using vCenter Update Manager
Understand how VMware and third party products, including operating systems, are impacted by virtualization
Troubleshoot common problems

Course Topics

Virtualization Infrastructure

Virtualization explained
How VMware virtualization compares to traditional PC deployments
Common constraints of physical deployments
How virtualization effectively addresses issues and brings new solutions
VMware vSphere software products

Stand Alone ESX Server Installation

Understanding ESXi and full ESX
Selecting, validating and preparing your server
Sizing Service Console and VMkernel resources
Storage controllers, disks and partitions
Software installation and licensing
Installation recommendations and best practices
First look at the VMware vSphere Client

Virtual and Physical Networking

vNetwork standard and distributed virtual Switches
Virtual Switches, Ports and Port Groups
Service Console and VMkernel ports
Creating, sizing Virtual Switches

NAS Shared Storage

Benefits Shared Storage offer to Virtual Infrastructure
Shared Storage options
NFS Overview
Configuring ESX to use NFS Shares
Troubleshooting NFS connections

Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines

VM virtual hardware, options and limits
Sizing and creating a new VM
Assigning, modifying and removing Virtual Hardware
Working with a VM’s BIOS
VMware remote console applications
Installing an OS into a VM
Driver installation and customization
VM best practices for monitoring and scalability
Accessing VMs and servers remotely via the Web
Understanding what should and should not be virtualized

VirtualCenter

vCenter architectural and feature overview
vCenter components
License Server and Licensing Options
vCenter Inventory and views
Host and Server based licensing models

VirtualCenter Inventory

vCenter's four views into Virtual Infrastructure
Role of the datacenter
Using folders to impart political, geographic or technical boundaries
Importing ESX hosts into vCenter management
Troubleshooting vCenter

VM Rapid Deployment using Templates, Clones

Templates - Virtual Machine Golden Master images
Creating, modifying, updating and working with Templates
Patching, and refreshing Templates
Cloning, one time copies of VMs
Best practices for cloning and templating
Performance considerations

ESX and VirtualCenter Permission Model

VMware Security model
Configuring local users and groups
Managing local permissions
vCenter security model
Local, Domain and Active directory users and groups
How permissions are applied

Advanced Virtual Networking

Uplinking Virtual and Physical Network segments using NICs
Distributed virtual switches and distributed Port Groups
NIC teaming for redundancy and Performance
Connecting to vLANs
Enhanced Network Security
Virtual routers and firewalls
Assigning physical NICs to VMs

Using Fibre and iSCSI Shared Storage

Fibre SAN overview
Identifying and using Fibre Host Bus Adapters
Scanning and Rescanning Fibre SANs
Partitioning and formatting Fibre SAN Storage
Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices
iSCSI overview
Virtual and physical iSCSI adapters
Creating virtual iSCSI adapters
Connecting to iSCSI storage
Scanning and rescanning iSCSI SANS
Performance and redundancy considerations and best practices

VMware File System (VMFS)

VMFS Overview
Unique file system properties of VMFS
Managing shared Volumes
Creating new VMFS partitions
Managing VMFS capacity with LUN spanning
Multi-pathing with Fibre and iSCSI SANs
VMFS performance considerations

Resource Management and Resource Pools

How ESX delivers resources to VMs
Shares, Reservations and Limits
CPU resource scheduling
Memory resource scheduling
Disk I/O bandwidth management
Network bandwidth management
Resource Pools

VM Hot and Cold Migration, Storage VMotion

Moving Virtual Machines
Cold Migrations to nVw ESX hosts, datastores
Hot Migrations with vMotion
vMotion requirements and dependencies
How vMotion works – detailed explanation
Troubleshooting VMotion
Storage VMotion for hot VM disk migrations

Load Balancing w. Distributed Resource Scheduler

Delegated resource management with Resource Pools
Resource balanced clusters with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
Isolation response and per-VM policy overrides

Failure Recover with High Availability Clusters

High Availability options
Manually take ownership of a VM from a failed server
VMware High Availability clusters
VMware Fault Tolerance

Back Up, Recovery and ESX Updates

Pro’s and Con’s of traditional back up strategies
Backup and recovery with VMware Data Recovery
Third party back up solutions
Backing up the ESX Service Console
Applying ESX patches with VMware vCenter Update Manager

Guided Consolidation

Using Guided Consolidation to identify physical PCs and servers
Selecting Domains and Workgroups
Selecting PCs and Servers for monitoring
Generating recommendations for physical to virtual migrations

Consolidation with vCenter Converter

vCenter Converter overview
Converting physical machines, virtual machines and OS Images
Cold migrations of physical machines to virtual machines
Hot migrations of physical machines to virtual machines
Performing physical to virtual conversions from Guided Consolidation

Effective Performance Monitoring

VMkernel CPU and memory resource management mechanisms
Identifying and resolving resource contention
Monitoring VM and ESX host performance
Configuring and customizing resource based alarms
Performance and capacity planning strategies

ESX and VirtualCenter Alarms

VMware Capacity Planner overview
Finding and monitoring physical workloads
Reviewing physical server performance data

P401 12/09

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To make an enquiry please click the dates below to send us your details.

Course
Code

Title

Venue

Days

Price
(ex vat)

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

P401

VMware vSphere with ESX 4 and vCenter 4

£1,495
€1,944

6^th

28^th

Please note: all prices quoted exclude VAT, which will be charged at the current UK rate.
Please note that exchange rate fluctuations will be taken into account.

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