VMware vSphere Virtualization from scratch

Compare physical infrastructure with virtual infrastructure in a virtual data center, and learn how virtualization improves efficiency and control of cpu, memory, disk, and network.

Compare physical and virtual architectures by showing how virtual hardware shares the host’s resources through resource allocation and guest memory in a virtual data center.

Real-world benefits of virtual machines include easy migration of running servers across locations, enabling business continuity, and consolidating multiple VMs on a single host for efficiency.

Clarify vSphere concepts by distinguishing the vCenter server and the vSphere client, and describe vSphere as the platform delivering infrastructure and application services like vMotion and HA.

Understand how vSphere networking connects virtual machines to each other and to the physical network via standard switches, port groups, VMkernel links, and how virtual meets physical networking works.

Explore vSphere storage concepts with VMFS-5 data stores on ESX hosts, including dynamic storage expansion, path management, and pluggable storage architecture for SAN/LUN environments.

Master the fundamentals of vSphere management using the vSphere client, navigating inventory, hosts, clusters, virtual machines, and data stores, plus networking and storage provisioning.

Identify a virtual machine's file set, including vmx, vmdk, nvram, logs, and delta vmdk snapshots, and see how preallocated space and raw mappings live in a data store.

Explore VMware vSphere virtual machine hardware, with up to 64 virtual CPUs, up to 1 TB RAM on hardware 8/9, multiple NICs, and attachable devices like CD/DVD and USB.

Create virtual machines in vSphere, choosing typical or custom setups, selecting a guest OS, storage, network, and disk provisioning options for ISO-based installations.

Learn two fast VM deployment methods in VMware vSphere: convert a powered-off machine into a template and deploy from it, or clone an existing VM, with customization options.

Configure a VMware vSphere virtual machine by editing hardware settings to adjust memory, CPUs, video cards, disk, and network adapters, even while powered on.

Learn to configure VMware vSphere options for a VM, including guest OS selection, VMware tools, time synchronization with the host, power management, hot add hardware, and boot and swap-file behavior.

Inspect resource settings for virtual machines, configuring CPU, memory, and disk with shares, reservations, and limits; learn how resource pools and clusters optimize allocation.

Explore patented technologies for memory efficiency in VMware, including transparent page sharing, memory compression, and ballooning with the balloon driver and memory control.

Explore best practices for virtual machines and memory, noting that most apps need one vcpu, memory should match application needs, and shares—not reservations or limits—control host resource allocation.

Explore how shares determine resource priority among virtual machines and resource pools, configure on the fly, understand relative and proportional ownership, and plan for limits and reservations.

Learn to use limits and reservations to manage virtual machine and resource pool capacity. Apply per virtual machine and resource pool settings, and understand how reservations may trigger admission control.

Organize VMware vSphere resource pools with a simple high, normal, low hierarchy, assign virtual machines to pools, and tune shares, limits, and reservations for prioritized performance.

Move a powered-on virtual machine from one host to another with vMotion, preserving power, disk, and memory state, while requiring shared storage and identical port group naming for seamless migration.

Learn how storage vMotion moves the virtual machine’s files between datastores on the fly without disrupting users, enabling storage type independence and flexible hardware maintenance.

Explore how VMware vSphere uses clusters to deliver high availability and fault tolerance for virtual machines. Learn how admission control and host monitoring shape failover capacity and resource allocation.

Manage high availability and fault tolerance in a vSphere cluster by configuring admission control, restart priorities, host isolation responses, and datastore heartbeat monitoring.

Discover how the distributed resource scheduler balances cpu and memory across a multi-host cluster, turning it into a giant computer with automation levels, placement rules, and per-virtual-machine options.

Balance disk resources across a data store cluster with storage distributed resource scheduler. Automate virtual machine file placement with runtime rules, IO latency thresholds, and affinity settings.

Explore vCenter performance charts to monitor cpu, memory, disk, and network usage, compare real-time and historical data, and save customized charts for quick analysis and alarms.

Explore how vCenter alarms monitor hosts, virtual machines, and data stores by setting thresholds and triggers, including conditional and event-based alerts, email notifications, and managing predefined and custom alarms.

Explore esxtop and resxtop as real-time analysis tools for monitoring a vSphere host. Learn to view cpu, memory, and networking data, connect remotely, and interpret worlds (threads) for performance troubleshooting.

Manage large vSphere environments with Center Operations Manager, Site Recovery Manager, Orchestrator, and Center Configuration Manager to achieve high availability, replication, automated workflows, and cloud scalability.

Explore how cloud computing is a service, with VMware cloud director provisioning on-demand infrastructure as a service, secure solutions, and a web-based portal to instantly create virtual resources.

Explore virtualization fundamentals with vSphere, from physical and virtual servers to deploying VMs, templates, and clones, while managing memory efficiency, resource pools, and scalable storage and networking.