VMware vSphere 5: Fast Track (VVFT)

This accelerated course is intended for system administrators, engineers, and operators who are experienced with VMware and want to earn VCP5 certification. It is also ideal for VCP2s and VCP3s who want to update to VCP5.

• Willingness to participate in a demanding, high-intensity training experience
• Comfort with system administration using command-line interfaces
• Have a basic understanding of virtualization concepts

This intensive, extended-hours training course focuses on installing, configuring, managing, and troubleshooting VMware® vSphere™ 5. It combines the content of the VMware vSphere 5: Install, Configure, Manage course with advanced tasks and skills for configuring a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. The course is based on VMware ESXi™ 5.0 and VMware vCenter Server™ 5.0. Completion of this course satisfies the prerequisite for taking the VMware® Certified Professional 5 exam. Upon completing this course, you can take the examination to qualify as a VMware Certified Professional. At the end of the course, you should be able to do the following:

• Configure and manage ESXi networking and storage.
• Create, configure, migrate, manage, convert, and monitor virtual machines and virtual appliances.
• Manage user access to the virtual infrastructure.
• Use vCenter Server to monitor resource usage.
• Scale the vSphere virtual infrastructure.
• Implement business continuity solutions.
• Manage changes to the vSphere environment.
• Use a command-line interface to manage vSphere.
• Install and configure ESXi and vCenter Server.
• Use vSphere Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts.

Module 1: Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

Module 2: Introduction to VMware Virtualization

• Introduce virtualization, virtual machines, and vSphere components
• Explain the concepts of server, network, and storage virtualization
• Describe where vSphere fits into the cloud architecture
• Install and use vSphere user interfaces

Module 3: Create Virtual Machines

• Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Deploy a single virtual machine

Module 4: VMware vCenter Server

• Introduce vCenter Server architecture
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses

Module 5: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Describe, create, and manage a standard virtual switch
• Describe and modify standard virtual switch properties
• Configure virtual switch load-balancing algorithms

Module 6: Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

• Introduce storage protocols and device names
• Configure ESXi with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage vSphere datastores
• Introduce VMware vSphere® Storage Appliance

Module 7: Virtual Machine Management

• Use templates and cloning to deploy virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Perform VMware vSphere® vMotion® and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create a vSphere vApp

Module 8: Access and Authentication Control

• Control user access through roles and permissions
• Configure and manage the ESXi firewall
• Configure ESXi lockdown mode
• Integrate ESXi with Active Directory
• Introduce VMware® vShield Zones

Module 9: Resource Management and Monitoring

• Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Use vCenter Server performance graphs and alarms to monitor resource usage

Module 10: High Availability and Fault Tolerance

• Introduce new vSphere High Availability architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Introduce vSphere Fault Tolerance

Module 11: Host Scalability

• Use Host Profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
• Configure and manage a vSphere Distributed Resource
• Scheduler cluster
• Configure and manage

Module 12: Network Scalability

• Create, configure, and manage vNetwork distributed switches, network connections, and port groups

Module 13: Storage Scalability

• Introduce Storage I/O Control
• Describe VMware vSphere® Storage APIs - Array Integration and VASA
• Explain policy-driven storage
• Add a storage policy to a virtual machine storage profile
• Describe Storage DRS operation
• Create a datastore cluster for Storage DRS
• Configure Storage DRS

Module 14: Data Protection

• Discuss a strategy for backing up ESXi hosts and vCenter Server
• Introduce the VMware Data Recovery appliance
• Discuss solutions for backing up virtual machines efficiently