Overview:

This 5-day Fast Track course helps vSphere Professionals gain an understanding of the new features and functionality of vSphere 6.5 and get new skills in VMware NSX. You will explore the new features and enhancements in VMware vCenter Server® 6.5 and VMware ESXi™ 6.5. Real-world use case deployment scenarios, hands-on lab exercises, and lectures will teach you the skills that you need to effectively implement and configure VMware vSphere® 6.5. This course also presents NSX as a part of the software- defined data center. You will learn how to use logical switching in NSX to virtualize your switching environment. The course details logical routing to enable you to dynamically route between different virtual environments. And you will learn how to take use gateway services, firewall configurations, and security services to help secure and optimize your NSX environment.

Access to a software-defined data center environment is provided through hands-on labs to reinforce the skills and concepts presented in the course

Duration:  05 days (40 hours)

Objectives:

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

-       List and describe key enhancements in vSphere 6.5

-       Use VMware vSphere® Client™, VMware Host Client™, and the VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™ shell

-       Add users to the lockdown exception users list and test the lockdown mode

-       Create a multisite content library for synchronizing virtual machine templates, vApps, ISO images, and scripts across vCenter Server® instances

-       Enable the VMware vSphere® Authentication Proxy service to automatically add new hosts to the Active Directory domain

-       Create storage policies and use these policies with virtual machines and virtual volume datastores

-       Work with VMware vSphere® Network I/O Control to create and configure a distributed switch

-       Use vSphere® vMotion® to migrate virtual machines across vCenter Server instances

-       Activate the high availability feature of vCenter Server Appliance

-       Use virtual machine encryption to encrypt and decrypt virtual disks

-       Configure and deploy NSX components for management and control

-       Configure, deploy, and use logical switch networks

-       Configure and deploy NSX distributed router appliances to establish east-west connectivity

-       Configure NSX Edge firewall rules to restrict network traffic

-       Configure NSX distributed firewall rules to restrict network traffic

-       Understand the cross-vCenter NSX feature

Intended Audience:

-       Experienced system or network administrators who have an extensive knowledge of vSphere

Prerequisites:

This course requires completion of one the following courses or equivalent knowledge and administration experience with VMware ESX®/ESXi and vCenter Server:

-       VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.5 or V6]

-       VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V5.5 or V6]

-       VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.5 or V6]

-       VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting [V5.5 or V6]

-       Understanding of enterprise switching and routing

-       Knowledge of TCP/IP services

-       Experience with firewalls and firewall rule sets

-       Understanding of concepts presented in the VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals course

Course outlines:

1. Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2.  New Features in vSphere 6.5

• Use vSphere Client, VMware Host Client, and the vCenter Server Appliance shell
• Discuss the new features and enhancements in
• vSphere 6.5

3.  Installation and Upgrade

• Describe new vCenter Server architecture features
• Choose between a distributed configuration and an embedded configuration based on your requirements
• Describe the enhancements to vCenter Server Appliance
• Describe how to upgrade vCenter Server 5.x and 6.0 to vCenter Server 6.5
• Describe how to upgrade an ESXi 5.x host to an ESXi 6.5 host
• Discuss the vSphere requirements for content libraries
• Create a local content library

4.  Compute Enhancements

• Discuss the enhancements to vSphere 6.5 scalability and performance
• Discuss the improvements to lockdown settings
• Explain the changes that enhance user accountability
• Discuss how virtual hardware 11 and 13 extends virtual machine resource configurations
• Describe how using large receive offload (LRO) reduces CPU-associated costs for network packet processing

5.  Storage Enhancements

• Describe the new features of VMFS6
• Describe the migration procedure from VMFS5 to VMFS6
• Discuss the benefits of using NFS v4.1 with vSphere
• Identify the differences between NFS v3 and NFS v4.1
• Describe the implications of using NFS v4.1
• Describe the benefits of using virtual volumes
• Describe per-virtual machine, policy-based policy management
• Describe how VMDK data operations are offloaded to storage arrays through the use of VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness™

6.  Security Enhancements

• Plan for secure boot support for ESXi hosts
• Explain how to back up encrypted virtual machines
• Encrypt core dumps
• Enable encrypted vSphere vMotion
• Deploy enhanced vCenter Server events and alarms, and vSphere logging

7.  Network Enhancements

• Use Network I/O Control
• Upgrade Network I/O Control to version 3
• Enable network resource management on VMware vSphere® Distributed Switch™
• Configure bandwidth allocation for system and virtual machine traffic based on shares and reservation

8.  Management Enhancements

• List the core security modules that are part of VMware Platform Services ControllerTM
• List the VMware certificate management components
• Describe certificate use changes in vSphere 6.0

9.  Availability Enhancements

• Describe the TCP/IP stack for vSphere vMotion that was introduced in vSphere 6.0
• Explain the changes that make vSphere vMotion migrations across high-latency networks possible
• Discuss the requirements for migrating a virtual machine across vCenter Server instances
• Explain how VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance in vSphere 6.0 supports virtual machines with multiple virtual CPUs (vCPUs)
• Describe the increased scalability of vSphere HA
• Explain the additional compatibility supported by vSphere HA

10.  Management and Control Plane Components

• Describe the management, control, and data planes
• Describe VMware NSX® Manager™
• Describe the VMware NSX® Controller™ cluster

11.  Logical Switch Networks

• Describe VXLAN logical switch networks
• Describe NSX Controller replication

12.  NSX Logical Routing

• Describe the NSX logical router
• Describe the NSX Edge services gateway

13.  NSX Edge Gateway Services

• Describe network address translation
• Describe load balancing
• Describe virtual private networking
• Configure L2 VPN
• Configure IPsec VPN

14.  NSX Firewall and Security Services

• Describe the NSX Edge firewall
• Describe the NSX distributed firewall
• Describe NSX data security
• Describe the Service Composer

15.  Cross-vCenter NSX

• Describe the cross-vCenter NSX feature
• Identify the benefits of the cross-vCenter NSX feature