Course Overview

In this course, you focus on building skills in configuring and performing common administrator and end-user tasks with VMware vSAN™ 6.7. You gain practical experience with vSAN production operations through the completion of instructor-led activities and hands-on lab exercises.

Course Objectives

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

• Describe vSAN host operations
• Discuss vSAN networking requirements
• Define the tasks involved in hardware replacement in a vSAN cluster
• Perform vSAN cluster scale-out and scale-up operations
• Describe common vSAN maintenance operations
• Define the tasks required for updating and upgrading vSAN
• Describe vSAN security operations
• Configure a key management server (KMS) cluster
• Configure vSAN storage policies and observe the effects of a cluster-wide change
• Explain vSAN resilience and availability features
• Perform ongoing vSAN management tasks
• Use the vSAN health service to monitor health and performance

Target Audience

• Storage and virtual infrastructure administrators who are responsible for production support and administration of vSAN v6.x

Course Modules

1 Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 vSAN Host and Hardware Operations
• Recognize the importance of hardware compatibility
• Ensure the compatibility of driver and firmware versioning
• Use tools to automate driver validation and installation
• Apply host hardware settings for optimum performance
• Recognize the benefits of using VMware vSphere® Distributed Switch™
• Compare the benefits of NIC teaming and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)
• Plan appropriately for networking configuration changes
• Identify ESXCLI commands and namespace options
• Recognize how to use ESXCLI commands for troubleshooting vSAN software and hardware issues
• Use Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) to get detailed information about the vSAN environment

3 vSAN Data Availability Operations
• Describe vSAN storage policies
• Recognize the impact of a vSAN storage policy change
• Describe and configure the Object Repair Timer advanced option
• Plan disk replacement in a vSAN cluster
• Plan maintenance tasks to avoid vSAN object failures
• Recognize the importance of backing up data in vSAN
• Describe the VMware vSphere® Storage APIs - Data Protection framework
• Recognize the importance of managing snapshot utilization in a vSAN cluster

4 vSAN Cluster Maintenance
• Perform typical vSAN maintenance operations
• Describe vSAN maintenance modes and data evacuation options
• Assess the impact on cluster objects of entering maintenance mode
• Determine the specific data actions required after exiting maintenance mode
• Define the steps to shut down and reboot hosts and vSAN clusters
• Migrate vSAN to a new vCenter Server instance
• Use best practices for boot devices
• Upgrade and update vSAN
• Replace vSAN hardware by using scale-in and scale-out strategies

5 vSAN Security Operations
• Identify differences between VM encryption and vSAN encryption
• Recognize how to perform ongoing operations to maintain data security
• Identify steps in adding an existing encrypted vSAN cluster to a new vCenter Server instance

6 vSAN Monitoring and Performance
• Describe how the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) enables VMware to improve
products and services
• Identify the vSAN tools and health checks available for monitoring vSAN health
• Manage alerts, alarms, and notifications related to vSAN in vSphere Client
• Create and configure custom alarms to trigger vSAN health issues
• Describe the vSAN tools and services that monitor vSAN performance
• Use performance views to access metrics for monitoring vSAN clusters, hosts, and virtual machines
• Explain how the writing of data generates I/O traffic and affects vSAN performance
• Use performance metrics to analyze the vSAN environment