This five-day course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere® 7, which includes VMware ESXi™ 7 and VMware vCenter Server® 7. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size.

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

Product Alignment
•  VMware ESXi 7.0
•  VMware vCenter Server 7.0

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

• Describe the software-defined data center (SDDC)

• Explain the vSphere components and their function in the infrastructure

• Install and configure VMware ESXi™ hosts

• Deploy and configure VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™

• Use VMware vSphere® Client™ to manage the vCenter Server inventory and the vCenter Server configuration

• Manage, monitor, back up, and protect vCenter Server Appliance

• Create virtual networks with vSphere standard switches

• Describe the storage technologies supported by vSphere

• Configure virtual storage using iSCSI and NFS storage

• Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS datastores

• Use the vSphere Client to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots

• Create a content library and deploy virtual machines from templates in the library

• Manage virtual machine resource use

• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®

• Create and manage a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™

• Discuss solutions for managing the vSphere life cycle

• Use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply patches and perform upgrades to ESXi hosts and virtual machines

•  System administrators
•  System engineers

This course has the following prerequisites:

• System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

1  Course Introduction
•  Introductions and course logistics
•  Course objectives

2  Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center
•  Explain basic virtualization concepts
•  Describe how vSphere fits into the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
•  Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, and storage
•  Recognize the user interfaces for accessing the vCenter Server system and ESXi hosts
•  Describe the ESXi host architecture
•  Navigate the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) to configure an ESXi host
•  Recognize ESXi host user account best practices
•  Install an ESXi host
•  Use VMware Host Client™ to configure ESXi host settings

3  Virtual Machines
•  Create and provision a virtual machine
•  Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
•  Install VMware Tools
•  Identify the files that make up a VM
•  Recognize the components of a VM
•  Recognize virtual devices supported by a VM
•  Describe the benefits and use cases for containers
•  Identify the parts of a container system

4  vCenter Server
•  Describe the vCenter Server architecture
•  Discuss how ESXi hosts communicate with vCenter Server
•  Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
•  Use vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory
•  Add data center, organizational objects, and hosts to vCenter Server
•  Use roles and permissions to enable users to access objects in the vCenter Server inventory
•  Back up vCenter Server Appliance
•  Monitor vCenter Server tasks, events, and appliance health
•  Use VMware vCenter Server® High Availability to protect a vCenter Server Appliance

5  Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
•  Create and manage standard switches
•  Describe the virtual switch connection types
•  Configure virtual switch security, traffic-shaping, and load-balancing policies
•  Compare vSphere distributed switches and 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 VMFS and NFS datastores
•  Explain how multipathing works with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
•  Recognize the components of a VMware vSAN™ configuration

7  Virtual Machine Management
•  Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
•  Modify and manage virtual machines
•  Create a content library and deploy virtual machines from templates in the library
•  Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine
•  Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
•  Describe the Enhanced vMotion Compatibility feature
•  Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
•  Examine the features and functions of VMware vSphere® Replication™
•  Describe the benefits of VMware vSphere® Storage APIs – Data Protection

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

9  vSphere Clusters
•  Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
•  Create a vSphere DRS cluster
•  Monitor a vSphere cluster configuration
•  Describe options for making a vSphere environment highly available
•  Explain the vSphere HA architecture
•  Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
•  Examine the features and functions of VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance

10  vSphere Lifecycle Management
•  Recognize the importance of vCenter Server Update Planner
•  Describe how VMware vSphere® Lifecycle Manager™ works
•  Describe how to update ESXi hosts using baselines
•  Validate ESXi host compliance using a cluster image
•  Describe how to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware