VMware vSphere 5.0: Overview

Course overview

This 1-day hands-on training course introduces the most compelling features of VMware vSphere® 5, which is the foundational component of the cloud infrastructure suite of software from VMware®. This course demonstrates vSphere features that help reduce your IT costs while improving efficiency, availability, scalability, flexibility, and manageability. The course is based on VMware ESXi™ 5.0 and VMware vCenter Server™ 5.0. This course is 55 percent lecture and 45 percent ands-on labs.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, you will be able to explain vSphere 5.0 storage, network, and virtualization concepts and have hands-on experience with the following:

Using the VMware vSphere® Client™ to deploy and manage virtual machines
Using VMware vSphere® vMotion® to migrate live virtual machines
Using vSphere Storage vMotion to migrate live virtual machine data
Configuring ESXi clusters to automatically balance virtual machine workloads
Hierarchically allocating CPU and memory resources to specific business functions
Using vCenter Server alarms and performance graphs to actively monitor the datacenter

Course outline

Module 1: Course Introduction

Understand the course goals
Understand the course objectives
Become familiar with the course outline

Module 2: Virtual Infrastructure Overview

Describe server virtualization concepts
Identify vSphere components, including vCenter Server, ESXi, and the vSphere Client
View and describe virtual network and storage components
Learn to use the vSphere Client management interface

Module 3: Creating Virtual Machines

Describe virtual machine virtual hardware components
Create and use templates to deploy virtual machines
Describe the functionality and benefits of installing VMware Tools on virtual machines
Automate guest operating system customization

Module 4: Allocating Compute Resources to Business Functions

Describe CPU and memory resource management techniques used in ESXi
Use virtual machine resource controls to allocate CPU and memory resources
Use resources pools to hierarchically allocate CPU and memory resources

Module 5: Migrating Virtual Machines

Describe the operation and benefits of vMotion and Storage vMotion
Use vMotion to migrate a live virtual machine
Use Storage vMotion to migrate a live virtual machine’s data

Module 6: Balancing Virtual Machine Workloads

Describe the operation and scalability benefits of vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Configure a DRS cluster and resource pools
Describe the operation and scalability benefits of Storage DRS
Configure a Storage DRS cluster
Describe the operation and cost benefits of vSphere Distributed Power Management

Module 7: Monitoring the Virtual Datacenter

Describe vCenter Server monitoring capabilities, including performance graphs and alarms
Use performance graphs to monitor ESXi hosts
Configure ESXi host and virtual machine alarms

Module 8: High Availability and Fault Tolerance

Describe the operation and availability benefits of vSphere High Availability
Configure a vSphere HA cluster
Describe the operation and availability benefits of VMware Fault Tolerance
Configure a virtual machine for fault tolerance

Module 9: Extending VMware vSphere Capabilities

Discuss how different VMware products and features work together to reduce the costs and improve the efficiency, availability, flexibility, and manageability of your datacenter