VMware Data Center Virtualization: Core Technical Skills

Technical professionals with basic system administration skills and operators responsible for managing virtual machines using VMware ESXi™ and VMware vCenter Server®

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

• Describe virtualization and virtual machines
• Describe vSphere components and the software-defined data center (SDDC)
• Explain the concepts of server, network, and storage virtualization
• Monitor network and datastore configurations in VMware vSphere® Client™
• Deploy, configure, and clone virtual machines
• Migrate, monitor, and manage virtual machines
• Monitor tasks and events in VMware vSphere® Client™
• Recognize how vSphere DRS and VMware vSphere® High Availability improve performance and availability of a vSphere cluster

1  Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2  Virtualization and vSphere Concepts

• Describe how virtual machines (VMs) work
• Recognize the purpose of a hypervisor
• Describe how VMs share resources in a virtualized environment
• Recognize the components of an SDDC
• Describe the relationship between vSphere, the SDDC, and cloud computing
• Recognize the functions of the components in a vSphere environment
• Access and view vSphere graphical user interfaces
• Identify VMware solutions that integrate with vSphere in the SDDC

3  Navigating the vSphere Client

• View and organize the inventory objects managed by vCenter Server
• Add and assign vSphere licenses
• Change the log level of vCenter Server
• Edit the startup policy of ESXi services
• Describe how vCenter Server roles and permissions work
• Add permissions to virtual machines

4  Lifecycle of Virtual Machines

• Add and remove VM virtual hardware components
• Identify the purpose of different VM files
• Configure VM settings
• Create and delete virtual machines
• Recognize the benefits of installing VMware Tools™
• Install VMware Tools into a guest operating system
• Upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware compatibility

5  vSphere Networking

• Describe virtual networking
• Recognize ways that virtual switches connect VMs and ESXi hosts to the network
• View components and properties of a vSphere standard switch configuration
• View a vSphere distributed switch configuration in vSphere Client
• Recognize when and how to use the settings for the security networking policy
• Recognize when and how to use the settings for the traffic shaping networking policy
• Describe how the NIC teaming and failover policy helps maintain network connectivity
• Perform basic checks to diagnose VM connectivity issues

6  vSphere Storage

• Describe the function of a datastore
• Recognize types of vSphere datastores
• View datastore information in vSphere Client
• Monitor datastore usage in vSphere Client

7  Virtual Machine Management

• Recognize the benefits of using VM templates
• Create and update a VM template
• Deploy a VM from an existing template
• Clone a virtual machine
• Recognize how to use guest OS customization specifications
• Deploy VMs from a content library
• Deploy a virtual appliance from an OVF template
• Perform a hot and cold migrations of VMs
• Identify requirements for using VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®
• Perform a vSphere Storage vMotion migration
• Identify use cases for VM snapshots
• Create and manage snapshots of a virtual machine

8  Resource Monitoring

• Recognize the purpose of each type of VM resource control
• Configure the resource allocation settings of a VM
• Observe the behavior of virtual machines with different share values
• Manage and acknowledge vSphere alarms
• Use performance charts to monitor VM CPU and memory usage
• Monitor tasks and events in vSphere Client

9  vSphere Clusters

• View information about the services that a vSphere cluster offers
• Recognize how vSphere HA responds to different types of failures
• Monitor vSphere HA during a host failure
• Describe how vSphere DRS works
• Interpret DRS scores given to VMs
• Recognize how to apply the appropriate vSphere DRS automation and migration threshold levels
• Describe how vSphere Fault Tolerance works
• Recognize how Enhanced vMotion Compatibility works

This course has the following prerequisites:

• Working knowledge of operating systems
• Understanding of basic network, storage, and computer hardware concepts

Attending this course is recommended to achieve the following certification:

• VMware Certified Technical Associate - Data Center Virtualization (VCTA-DCV)