Learning VMware vSphere 7 ESXi and vCenter Administration

This video covers the steps on where and how to download ESXi.

** In November 2023, Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware.

As of early 2024 you can no longer get a free licensed copy of ESXi. Although there are still free versions floating around the internet, you'll now need to obtain the ESXi installer software either from an OEM or from the Broadcom Support Portal. You can also find cutomizable versions for Dell, HPE etc, ie if you search for HPE ESXi download.

Step by Step guide on how to install and configure VMware ESXi

This video goes over the basic look, feel and functions within the ESXi interface which is accessible via a vSphere web session.

This video goes over some basic best practices steps when building and setting up an ESXi host. These are my good practices and recommendations across various companies and industries.

The basic step by step guide on how to Assign a license to an ESXi host

The basic step by step guide on how to add an ISO (or any file) into a Datastore in vSphere. This ISO can then be used to build a VM.

This video goes through a high-level overview on how to configure and setup a Virtual Standard Switch within vSphere

Ensuring that that all the ESXi hosts are in sycn and in time is very important, this video covers how to configure the NTP time on an ESXI host.

Before major works, or key configurations on an ESXi host, it's important to place a host into what's called maintenance mode.

We'll go through the steps on how to build a new Virtual Machine (VM) now that ESXi has been setup.

Once a VM has been built how do you access this VM and login to the console.

Once a VM has been built, it's important to install VMware Tools onto it to allow better compatibility between the VM, OS and the ESXi host.

How to make amendments, changes and updates to a VM including RAM, CPU and other Hardware configurations

For additional guides on building a VM, this video goes through the end to end setup of a brand new Windows Server 2019 VM.

For additional guides on building a VM, this video goes through the end to end setup of a brand new Ubuntu Server VM.

This video goes through a general overview on how storage works within the VMware infrastructure.

We'll look at

- Datastores

- iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC)

- NFS

What is the difference between a Thin and a Thick provisioned disk in VMware

This video provides an overview comparing NFS vs iSCSI and also covers the end-to-end setup and configuration of NFS and iSCSI storage on a Synology NAS.

This storage is then added as a Datastore within our vSphere environment.

We'll look at where and how to download VMware vCentre.

The version that we are downloading is a trial edition and is completely free. It will work for a limited amount of time after which a license will need to be purchased vCentre.

This video covers the step-by-step guide on how to install and configure vCentre once it has been downloaded.

You can deploy the installation from a Windows or Mac computer which makes this process very easy.

Now that vCenter is installed this video will go over how vCenter is structured, as well as the most commonly used features with vCenter.

With vCenter now setup, the next step is to add an ESXi host into the vCenter environment. This guide provides not only an overview of vCenter itself but also how to add one or more ESXi hosts into vCenter.

With a Host now added to vCenter, Clusters can be created, and hosts can be relocated between Clusters.

This video provides a high level graphical overview of what vMotion is and how it works. I'll draw up some examples of how it functions.

Now that you understand what vMotion is and what it's purpose is, let's look at how to use the

- Migration features (with a VM turned off)

- Migration feature (with VM turned on, ie vMotion)

- EVC features and what it is.

Following up from vMotion, DRS is a fantastic technology. I'll show you in this video on what DRS is and how DRS works.

Now that you know what DRS is and how it works, let's look at practically how to set it up within vSphere, as well as defining and showing you what affinity rules are. In this video we'll cover

- DRS

- Affinity Rules

- Anti Affinity Rules

With vCenter comes the ability to take advantage of two great technologies, HA (High Availability) and FT (Fault Tolerance). This video will define what these are, and how you could use them in vSphere.

To better understand vSphere and how it's performing, it's very important to know how to view and understand the vSphere Logs, Alerts and the overall health and performance of the environment.

Networking is a large topic within VMware vSphere. This video will cover

- Networking in VMware

- Difference between Physical and Virtual Switches

- What is a Standard vSwitch

- What is a Distributed vSwitch

A VM that is built has a specific Hardware Version. What is this, why is it important, and how to upgrade a VM's Hardware version.

Learning how to Backup and Snapshot a VM is very important. This video covers what Snapshots are and how to manage them.

It's important to have a system for backing up and restoring your VM's. We'll be using some free software that comes with the Synology storage suite of products.

To better manage a VMware environement and build multiple VM's, it's helpful to understand what a VM Template is and how it will benefit you.

Now that VMware is setup and built, practically, how many VM's can you run on a ESXi host??

What happens if a ESXi host crashes or reboots? Wouldn't it be nice if a VM could automatically could power on or power off automatically? This video covers this.

This video covers the steps on how to copy and clone a VM. This essentially creates a copy of an existing VM.

A VM's RAM and CPU can be increased if a VM is powered off...what about being able to perform this feature while the VM is on? Let's talk about that.

This video goes over the steps on how to access the command line (CLI) of an ESXi host. Very useful feature.

We use a really helpful tool built into the ESXi CLI to troubleshoot your host.

We use a really helpful tool built into the ESXi CLI to troubleshoot your storage on your ESXi host.

You can also enable SSH from the ESXi console, rather than the vSphere web client, this guide shows you how.

This video covers how to remove VM's that may have become corrupted, are invalid or no longer exist.

…check out my expanded learning courses and keep building your skills: https://www.udemy.com/user/emilio-aguero-2

This is the final video in this series. Thank you for taking the time to watch these videos, I hope this series was helpful to you in your continued quest to mastering VMware vSphere.

Pleaes share this video series with a friend.