VMware vSphere 6.5 Administration Basics Ultimate

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Explore the fundamentals of virtualization with chapter two's overview, introducing key concepts for VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics and setting the stage for hands-on management.

Introduces VMware virtualization overview, outlining three topics in chapter two: core virtualization technologies related to vSphere, desktop and other third-party options, and what's new in vSphere 6.5.

Explore VMware virtualization in chapter 2, topic 1, of the VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics ultimate course. Understand the core ideas of VMware virtualization introduced in topic 1.

Understand vSphere as a marketing umbrella and identify core technologies: ESX II virtualization on hosts and centralized management with vCenter Server and Linux-based migration, plus licensing implications across key areas.

Discover how VMware Fusion 8.5 acts as a Mac-based hypervisor, running Windows or Linux inside a VM, and featuring unity mode that hides the OS, displaying only the application.

Desktop virtualization options like zen desktop and horizon view struggle, as most end-user environments run on back-end esxi hosts rather than zen server.

Explore vSphere 6.5 update 1 features, including higher configuration maximums, the linux-based vcenter server appliance, Windows-to-vcenter migrations, encryption, secure boot, and enhanced logging.

Explore vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (VMware ESXi), comparing trial, free, and paid editions, for 60 days, and learn installation via ISO, licensing, and how free lacks centralized vCenter management.

Explore ESXi 6.5, the hypervisor at the core of the vSphere suite, with the VM kernel translating hardware to virtual resources and the common information model for devices.

Plan a vSphere deployment by evaluating guest OS choices and 32/64-bit options. Consider converting physical servers, required applications, growth, storage budgets, and features like vmotion, drs, and ha.

Learn how to use DCUI to configure the ESXi local management network, set a static IPv4 address, DNS, hostname, and view or reset IP settings and network options.

Ensure accurate log timestamps by enabling time synchronization for hosts and their virtual machines, using a.p 4 over UDP 123 or a domain controller as the time source.

Master troubleshooting ESXi within VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics by exploring chapter three topic five techniques for diagnosing and resolving common hypervisor issues.

Identify and manage the hostd service on VMware vSphere hosts, using hostd status to monitor and restart to recover, noting it only restarts the management service, not VMs.

Explore planning the esx deployment and guidelines for esx ii and the surrounding environment. Demonstrate esx installation with a hands-on demo, cover hostname resolution, and troubleshoot esx ii.

Discover how RVTools v3.x helps VMware admins audit all VMs by exporting hardware and usage data to Excel, viewable via the V Info tab, with snapshots and disk space insights.

Explore various tools for managing your virtual environment, including third party options and a Turbin nomic trial, with links to multiple resource sites and ESX tools.

Explore ESXi management within the VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics, focusing on chapter 4 topics and practical strategies to manage ESXi effectively.

Discard the old vSphere client (VIC), which is no longer available or supported in 6.5 and cannot connect to vCenter. Use the built-in host client to manage ESXi.

Explore the management user interface for ESXi and vCenter, navigating web and flash clients, VMware documentation, and management appliances while browsing host storage, inventory, and certificates.

unveil the new vSphere client 6.5 HTML5, a clarity interface rolling out across VMware products with improved functionality over update one, moving away from flash to connect to vCenter.

Explore datastore browsing in vSphere 6.5, navigating data stores, folders, and files across legacy and web clients, with uploads, downloads, and the VMX file's add-to-inventory option.

Explore ESXi 6.x troubleshooting options, toggle the local shell and SSH, and adjust timeouts to balance convenience with security. Learn to restart management agents when needed.

Discover the built-in vi editor in esxi, its unix roots, and navigation with h j k l cursor keys, plus commands like :wq to save and :q! to quit.

Master vSphere 6.5 licensing basics by examining chapter 5 topic one licensing and how licenses are applied within the administration workflow.

Explore how vCenter Server 6.x and ESXi host licensing is managed through the platform services controller, with embedded or external topology and access to licensing.

The essentials licensing offers a lower-cost path for up to three hosts with up to eight vCPUs per virtual machine, while essentials plus adds high availability clusters and data protection.

Plan the center server deployment by outlining chapter 5 topics and key considerations for successful setup.

Explore vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 specifications, its Susi Linux origin, scalable environments from small to large, and the maximum hosts and virtual machines in the pre-built VM package.

Compare Windows vCenter and vCSA 6.0/6.5, highlighting all-inclusive features like update manager, embedded database, and backup and restore capabilities.

Understand VMware vCenter 6.5 architecture across Windows and Linux deployments, featuring platform services controller with single sign-on, core services, VM provisioning, monitoring, and a plugin enabled ecosystem for integrations.

Explore topologies for vCenter 6.x, from all-in-one embedded deployments to PSC and vCenter designs. Learn about PSCs, standalone or external configurations, and how load balancing and replication enable high availability.

Explore the hosts and clusters view, create data center objects, folders, and resource pools, configure CPU and memory usage limits, and review the permissions tab for each object.

Explore vCenter inventory views with the VMs and VM templates options, learn to sort by VM name, lock the first column, and customize visible columns for quick VM details.

Schedule tasks in vSphere by selecting navigator objects to expose actions like powering, cloning, migrating, and snapshotting virtual machines, with Windows task scheduler or cron as alternatives.

Master troubleshooting techniques for the vCenter Server and its database, focusing on practical steps to diagnose and resolve common issues covered in chapter 5 topic seven.

Refresh vCenter server and ESXi when the screen misbehaves, using the legacy Windows client or the web interface reload, and manage host services and the vCenter agent with startup policies.

Be aware of the built-in timeout for the VCSA root password, set to 365 days by default; manage or set to never expire via the vCenter interface.

Create and modify virtual networks in VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics. Chapter 6 topic one explains creating and modifying virtual networks.

Create dedicated VMkernel ports for management, vSphere replication, fault tolerance logging, and provisioning traffic, and separate IP storage such as iSCSI or NFS, with multiple uplinks for redundancy.

learn to add networking in vSphere by creating a standard virtual switch, attaching physical nics to uplinks, and configuring a VM kernel port and port group with static IP addresses.

Explore how standard virtual switches (vss) connect vms within the host ram, manage traffic by subnet, and use vmkernel ports and vlan trunking for isolation and routing.

Add more physical NICs to the virtual switch to create extra lanes for NIC teaming, boosting throughput, rather than speeding up a VM by aggregating its virtual NICs.

Configure NIC teaming for redundancy and load distribution across multiple NICs on a virtual switch, with failover for parent and child switches and up to 32 NICs per team.

Route based on IP hash on standard switches balances traffic across multiple NICs by using source and destination to select a physical NIC, sharing the same virtual port ID.

In vSphere 6.5, define a separate default gateway for each vmkernel port and create separate stacks for vmkernel and provisioning traffic, each with its own gateway and routing table.

Configure physical switches for vSphere by disabling spanning tree on host ports, bpdu, and port security, and ensure NIC team ports share a layer-2 broadcast domain with trusted VLAN ports.

Discover the new vSphere distributed switch features in 5.5, including layer 3 traffic filtering and marking, enhanced LACP, host-level packet captures, and default network IO controls in the web client.

Edit vds settings lets you configure topology, mtu, uplinks, discovery protocols, and pvlan types (promiscuous, isolated, community) for precise port group isolation and network access.

Edit vds port group settings to cover elastic port allocation and default QoS. Configure security policies, VLAN/PVLAN options, NIC teaming, uplinks, netflow, and port block controls.

Configure net flow by setting up the net flow collector on distributed switch, enable port group monitoring, and deploy a vm on that port group with the solar winds collector.

Enable the distributed switch health check by configuring the managed tab settings for two options, including teaming and failover. Then monitor the health status on the monitor tab.

Explore per VM network IO control settings (NIOC) and apply granular configurations down to the per-vnic level by adjusting the individual VM's adapter settings, including reservations and limits.

Explore configuring storage in chapter 7 of the VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics course today.

Explore this chapter’s 11 topics on storage in vSphere 6.5, covering iSCSI storage, fiber channel storage, VM data stores, VSAN, virtual volumes, and storage management solutions.

Explore the new storage features in vSphere 6.5, as presented in topic 0 of chapter 7.

Examine multipath concepts with multiple host paths through adapters and storage processors to access LUNs, highlighting that only one path is active at a time and round robin load balancing.

Plan path selection to avoid a single bottleneck; without multipath, all traffic uses the first path. Use multiple LUNs or lines and apply round-robin with low IOPS per vendor guidance.

Learn to configure and manage storage devices via the web client, use multipathing, review path selection policies, and see how policies affect fiber channel paths.

Explore sioc enhancements, including stats-only mode, threshold computation with the io injector, and in 6.5 io limits, shares, and reservations integrated into storage io control policy management to prioritize workloads.

Learn the iSCSI overview: initiators over an IP-based network send SCSI commands (CDBs) to access block storage, with gigabit networks and a default port of 30 to 60.

Enable software iSCSI multipathing by dedicating network adapters, binding VMkernel ports to the software initiator, configuring target IPs, and using the storage wizard with optional round robin and low IOPS.

Explore esx/esxi and fiber channel san environments, focusing on worldwide names, 64-bit hexadecimal addresses, zoning and masking zoning, and how FCoE and fiber switches impact cost and performance.

Compare hardware and software initiators for multipathing with fibre channel. Show how two-card offload enabled adapters with jumbo frames and hybrid cards offer faster or comparable performance to HP cards.

Understand VMFS-5 in VMware vSphere 6.5, including per-VM storage directories, 1 mb blocks with 8 kb sub-blocks, upgrade from VMFS-3, and 2 tb per volume (up to 64 tb) limits.

VMFS6 uses 1 MB small blocks for files under 512 MB and 512 MB blocks for larger files, boosting efficiency; upgrade path from VMFS5 is not supported; volumes created separately.

Allocate 100 gigabytes by structuring into 64 gigabytes as small file blocks, followed by four large file blocks of eight gigs each, and finish with four gigs of small blocks.

Upgrade VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 while preserving the original 8 megabyte block size. If space allows, use the upgrade option; otherwise, perform a clean format to enable VMFS-5 for long-term use.

Identify hidden system files on a VMFS data store, specifically files ending with .s.f., and understand they are system files not to be edited as they manage pointers and indexing.

Discover how NFS data stores compare to VMFS LUN on SAN, including boot restrictions, VMkernel port access, and how to adjust the NFS targets limit from 8 to 256.

Configure the virtual flash read cache by setting the flash resource size on a VM, then use advanced options to choose the block size for the application.

Learn vSAN device configuration on ESXi hosts, with direct attached storage, one SSD for IO caching, and seven spinning disks per disk group, up to five groups per host.

Discover vSAN version 6.2 with ESXi 6.0 update, featuring dedup and compression, raid options, improved swap efficiency, thin provisioning, IOPS QoS, and clustering service support for Microsoft SFP and Oracle.

Explore vSAN 6.5 and VSA, with z-axis support, all-flash deployments, and licensing tiers standard, enterprise, and enterprise plus, plus three-node and witness-based two-node cluster options.

Explore vSAN version 6.6, the April debut with over 25 new features, including vSAN encryption, local protection for stretched clusters, enhanced repairs, and ESXi command-line options.

Understand the vvols architecture: the host talks to the storage array via protocol endpoints, storing vm files as objects in containers with policy based management via the vasa provider.

Explore native virtual volumes replication in vSphere 6.5, enabled by vSphere API for storage awareness and VASA 3.0, allowing replication from one site to another.

Review the compatibility site to identify VVols certified storage vendors, note provider versions, and understand how Dell, HP, EMC, NetApp, IBM, and Hitachi support VVols alongside legacy san and luns.

Explore creating a virtual machine, building templates and clones, and using virtual appliances, while managing V-Amp container objects and EMS, then cover startup, shutdown, snapshots, and troubleshooting.

Discover how VM hardware is composed, from Phoenix BIOS and hardware versioning to RAM, USB, serial ports, SCSI and IDE controllers, PCI direct path I/O, and multi-display support.

Explains how a new VM creates a directory on the data store with the VMX configuration file, descriptor and data files, swap and log files, and suspension and snapshot considerations.

Explore VMRC and web console options in vSphere 6.5: install VMRC, set a default console, and open remote or web consoles directly from the VM thumbnail gear.

Installing VMware Tools brings essential drivers, improved mouse behavior, and guest power management, enabling proper shutdown or restart and reliable snapshotting via the guest OS menu or summary bar.

Customizing the os lets you tailor any os from Vista on up, with open source files included in vCenter copies. You can clone a vm or deploy from a template.

Create a new customization specification with the customization specification manager, generating Windows or Linux answer files, guiding name, network, licensing, admin credentials, and domain settings.

Explore virtual appliances within the VMware vSphere 6.5 administration basics ultimate course, Chapter 8, Topic three.

Enable hot add for CPU and RAM in virtual machines by pre-enabling in the VM options, then expand CPU and memory in virtual hardware and check hot add boxes.

Learn how to resize a virtual disk in vSphere 6.5 by increasing the VM's hard drive, then extend the Windows C drive to use newly allocated space.

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Enable automatic startup and shutdown of virtual machines on a host in vSphere, noting it is off by default and disabled when the host joins a cluster; set startup order.

Configure vm startup and shutdown order in vSphere 6.5, switch from manual to automatic startup, adjust startup delays, and set the default shutdown action to power off.

Use virtual machine snapshots for testing, not backups, and keep them within 72 hours, using delta disk files and optional memory captures; revert or commit as you test.

The snapshot manager lists three snapshots, two with RAM indicating a running VM, and the non-ram snapshot would be powered off. Delete and delete all options are available.

Compare virtual machines to physical servers, showing virtual machines use fewer resources. Start small with a virtual machine and scale resources as needed; apply nic teaming and remove unused ports.

Enable security configuration on a standalone esx host through advanced settings or by editing the past budy file. The screen shows an AOL passphrase as a set of passwords.

Explore vSphere 6.5 security enhancements, including vm level encryption, secure boot for esx host and guest os, enhanced multi-factor authentication, and encrypted vmo improving audit trails.

VM encryption is embedded in the hypervisor and implemented through VM storage policy in vCenter. By selecting a VM policy, you encrypt the VM's on-disk files regardless of power state.

Explore the VMware vSphere encryption workflow, detailing the steps for a new VM versus an existing encrypted or unencrypted VM.

Learn how to assign ESXi permissions directly to Active Directory users by creating an AD group like ESX Space Admins, which grants administrator role across all domain-joined hosts.

Enable data encryption by default for all connections; set the host firewall to high. It uses 2048-bit RSA, 256-bit encryption, SSL, and SSH for VM kernel communications.

Discover how vSphere 6.0 to 6.5 changes consolidate a larger number of services under a smaller set called solutions users, with each solutions user holding a certificate.