Administering VMware vSphere 8 (Learn, Setup ESXi + vCenter)

Where and How to download ESXi, and how to setup ESXi 8.

** 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.

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

The basic step by step guide on how to Assign a license to 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.

Importance of ISO's and how to add an ISO (or any file) into a Datastore in vSphere. This ISO can then be used to build a VM.

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

This video goes through a high-level overview on Virtual Switches and networking within VMware

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.

We'll talk in this video about Datacenters, Clusters and how to add your ESXi hosts into your vCenter environment.

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.

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)

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

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.

Now that you know what DRS is and how it works, let's now look at what affinity rules are, and why they are essential in keeping your environment running healthy.

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

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.

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

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.

We'll cover the importance of understanding VMware services, and how to enable and use SSH

Let's provide a summary of some of the other important features in VMware, including the vCenter firewalls, managing certificated and setting the NTP time on your hosts

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

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

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.

We use a really helpful tool built into the ESXi CLI to troubleshoot your host and identify physical NICs assigned to VM's.

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

If you are prepparing for an interview or want to know what questions a good VMware admin should be able to answers, here are a few sample questions along with some sample answers.

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