VSICM8 - VMware vSphere v8: Install, Configure, Manage

Overview

This five-day course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere 8, which includes VMware ESXi™ 8 and VMware vCenter® 8. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size.

This course is the foundation for most VMware technologies in the software-defined data center.

Product Alignment

VMware ESXi 8.0
VMware vCenter 8.0

Objectives

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

Install and configure ESXi hosts
Deploy and configure vCenter
Use the vSphere Client to create the vCenter inventory and assign roles to vCenter users
Create virtual networks using vSphere standard switches and distributed switches
Create and configure datastores using storage technologies supported by vSphere
Use the vSphere® Client™ to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
Create content libraries for managing templates and deploying virtual machines
Manage virtual machine resource allocation
Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®
Create and configure a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere® High Availability and
VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™
Manage the life cycle of vSphere to keep vCenter, ESXi hosts, and virtual machines up to date

Prerequisites

This course has the following prerequisites:

System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

Audience

System administrators
System engineers

Outline

1 Course Introduction

Introductions and course logistics
Course objectives

2 vSphere and Virtualization Overview

Explain basic virtualization concepts
Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere
Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, storage, and GPUs

3 Installing and Configuring ESXi

Install an ESXi host
Recognize ESXi user account best practices
Configure the ESXi host settings using the DCUI and VMware Host Client

4 Deploying and Configuring vCenter

Recognize ESXi hosts communication with vCenter
Deploy vCenter Server Appliance
Configure vCenter settings
Use the vSphere Client to add and manage license keys
Create and organize vCenter inventory objects
Recognize the rules for applying vCenter permissions
View vCenter logs and events

5 Configuring vSphere Networking

Configure and view standard switch configurations
Configure and view distributed switch configurations
Recognize the difference between standard switches and distributed switches
Explain how to set networking policies on standard and distributed switches

6 Configuring vSphere Storage

Recognize vSphere storage technologies
Identify types of vSphere datastores
Describe Fibre Channel components and addressing
Describe iSCSI components and addressing
Configure iSCSI storage on ESXi
Create and manage VMFS datastores
Configure and manage NFS datastores

7 Deploying Virtual Machines

Create and provision VMs
Explain the importance of VMware Tools
Identify the files that make up a VM
Recognize the components of a VM
Navigate the vSphere Client and examine VM settings and options
Modify VMs by dynamically increasing resources
Create VM templates and deploy VMs from them
Clone VMs
Create customization specifications for guest operating systems
Create local, published, and subscribed content libraries
Deploy VMs from content libraries
Manage multiple versions of VM templates in content libraries

8 Managing Virtual Machines

Recognize the types of VM migrations that you can perform within a vCenter instance and across vCenter instances
Migrate VMs using vSphere vMotion
Describe the role of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility in migrations
Migrate VMs using vSphere Storage vMotion
Take a snapshot of a VM
Manage, consolidate, and delete snapshots
Describe CPU and memory concepts in relation to a virtualized environment
Describe how VMs compete for resources
Define CPU and memory shares, reservations, and limits

9 Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters

Create a vSphere cluster enabled for vSphere DRS and vSphere HA
View information about a vSphere cluster
Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster
Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings
Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster
Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures
Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster
Recognize vSphere HA design considerations
Recognize the use cases for various vSphere HA settings
Configure a vSphere HA cluster
Recognize when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance

10 Managing the vSphere Lifecycle

Enable vSphere Lifecycle Manager in a vSphere cluster
Describe features of the vCenter Update Planner
Run vCenter upgrade prechecks and interoperability reports
Recognize features of VMware vSphere® Lifecycle Manager™
Distinguish between managing hosts using baselines and managing hosts using images
Describe how to update hosts using baselines
Describe ESXi images
Validate ESXi host compliance against a cluster image and update ESXi hosts
Update ESXi hosts using vSphere Lifecycle Manager
Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager automatic recommendations
Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware