Course Overview

This course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere® 6.7, which includes VMware ESXi™ 6.7 and VMware vCenter Server® 6.7. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size.

Course Objectives

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

• Describe the software-defined data center
• Explain the vSphere components and their function in the infrastructure
• Add ESXi hosts to a VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™ instance
• Manage vCenter Server Appliance
• Use a local content library as an ISO store, and deploy a virtual machine
• Describe vCenter Server architecture
• Use vCenter Server to manage an ESXi host
• Configure and manage vSphere infrastructure with VMware Host Client™ and VMware vSphere® Client™
• Describe virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
• Configure standard switch policies
• Use vCenter Server to manage various types of host storage: VMware vSphere® VMFS, NFS, iSCSI, and RDM
• Examine the features and functions of Fibre Channel and VMware vSAN™  
• Manage virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion®
• Migrate virtual machine storage with VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®
• Monitor resource usage, and manage resource pools
• Discuss the VMware vSphere® High Availability (vSphere HA) cluster architecture
• Configure vSphere HA
• Manage vSphere HA 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 VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply patches and perform basic troubleshooting of ESXi hosts, virtual machines, and vCenter Server operations
• Identify troubleshooting methodology to logically diagnose faults and improve troubleshooting efficiency

Target Audience

• System administrators
• System engineers

Course Modules 

1 Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives
• Describe the content of the course
• Gain a complete picture of the VMware certification system
• Familiarize yourself with the benefits of the VMware Education Learning Zone
• Identify additional resources

2 Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center
• Describe how vSphere fits into the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
• Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, and storage
• Use vSphere Client to access and manage your vCenter Server system and ESXi host
• Compare virtual machine hardware version 14 to other versions
• Identify the virtual network adapters, and describe the enhanced VMXNET3
• Compare the types of virtual disk provisioning
• Install and configure ESXi host settings
• Identify the advantages of ESXi Quick Boot

3 Creating Virtual Machines
• Create, provision, and remove a virtual machine
• Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
• Describe how to import a virtual appliance OVF template

4 vCenter Server
• Describe the vCenter Server architecture
• Discuss how ESXi hosts communicate with vCenter Server
• Access and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory
• Add data center, organizational objects, and hosts to vCenter Server
• Create custom inventory tags
• Describe the rules for applying permissions
• Create a custom role in vCenter Server
• Create a vCenter Server Appliance backup schedule
• Restore vCenter Server Appliance from a backup
• Monitor vCenter Server Appliance

5 Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
• Describe, create, and manage standard switches
• Configure virtual switch security, traffic-shaping and load-balancing policies
• Compare vSphere distributed switches and standard switches
• Describe the virtual switch connection types
• Describe the new TCP/IP stack architecture
• Use VLANs with standard switches

6 Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage
• Identify storage protocols and storage device types
• Discuss ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS and NFS datastores
• Explain how multipathing works with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Identify the advantages of VMware vSAN™

7 Virtual Machine Management
• Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Create an instant clone of a virtual machine
• Identify the types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them
• Add a hot-pluggable device
• Dynamically increase the size of a virtual disk
• Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots

8 Resource Management and Monitoring
• Discuss CPU and memory concepts in a virtualized environment
• Describe what overcommitment of a resource means
• Identify additional technologies that improve memory usage
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Use various tools to monitor resource usage
• Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events

9 vSphere HA, vSphere Fault Tolerance, and Protecting Data
• Explain the vSphere HA architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters
• Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover
• Describe vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines
• Support vSphere Fault Tolerance interoperability with vSAN
• Examine enhanced consolidation of vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machines
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Replication

10 vSphere DRS
• Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Create a vSphere DRS cluster
• View information about a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure virtual machine affinity, DRS groups, and VM-host affinity rules
• Remove a host from a vSphere DRS cluster

11 vSphere Update Manager
• Describe the architecture, components, and capabilities of vSphere Update Manager
• Use vSphere Update Manager to manage the patching of ESXi, virtual machines, and vApps
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Update Manager EAM integration
• Integrate vSphere Update Manager with vSphere DRS

12 vSphere Troubleshooting
• Apply a troubleshooting methodology to logically diagnose faults and improve troubleshooting efficiency
• Review troubleshooting tools
• Find important log files
• Use vSphere Syslog Collector