This course enables storage administrators to better plan and manage their storage systems to support a VMware vSphereβ’ environment. The course uses lecture, hands-on labs, and case studies to demonstrate vSphere interaction and operation with storage rather than to teach vSphere administration skills.
Objectives
β’ Explain basic concepts related to virtual computing, including vSphere server and storage virtualization
β’ Be cooperative partners with vSphere administrators to design, configure, manage, and troubleshoot storage in a vSphere environment
β’ Identify and employ tools and utilities that can be used to inspect and modify storage configuration, from a virtual machine disk to a specific datastore
Course Datasheet
Wednesday, September 8. 2010
New Training in Beta: VMware vSphere - Skills for Storage Administrators
Outline
Course Introduction
β’ Introductions and course logistics
β’ Course objectives
Introduction to VMware Virtualization
β’ Hypervisors (the VMkernel) and virtual machines
β’ Benefits of server virtualization
β’ Shared storage and the VMware features that depend on it
Comparing Storage Protocols
β’ Storage protocols supported by vSphere
β’ Comparing storage protocol types (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, and FCoE)
β’ Storage design considerations in a vSphere environment
VMware vStorage VMFS
β’ Creating a VMFS volume and using extents and Volume Grow to resize a VMFS volume
β’ VMFS dependence on SCSI reservations
β’ Options for creating virtual machine disks and the benefits of each option
β’ Thin provisioning and its effect on storage
LUN Considerations
β’ Using IOPS, MBps, and total capacity information to size LUNs
β’ Using esxtop or resxtop to determine IOPS and MBps
β’ VMFS best practices
β’ Strategies for virtual disk placement
Multipathing Considerations
β’ Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NAS multipathing
β’ Multipathing algorithms available in vSphere
β’ Multipathing software components in the vStorage stack
β’ Integrating active-active, active-passive, virtual port, and asymmetric logical unit access arrays into a vSphere environment
β’ Utilities to inspect and manage vSphere multipathing configuration
Zoning and Access Control
β’ Importance of configuring consistent host LUN ID numbering
β’ Zoning and access control for Fibre Channel
β’ Access control for iSCSI and NAS
β’ Inter-Switch Link and trunking considerations
β’ vSphere and Registered State Change Notifications
β’ Capturing Fibre Channel and IP storage traces
Snapshot and Replication Operations
β’ LUN replication in a vSphere environment
β’ Identifying a snapshot LUN in vSphere
β’ Controlling how the VMkernel handles snapshot LUNs
β’ Using snapshot LUNs for backup and disaster recovery
β’ VMware Consolidated Backup and the VMware API for Data Protection
β’ Virtual machine swap files and how they affect storage consumption
β’ Virtual machine snapshots and how they affect storage consumption
Storage Performance
β’ Storage configuration and its effect on performance
β’ vSphere storage queueing and how it affects performance
β’ vSphere utilities to monitor storage latency, capacity, and consumption
β’ Troubleshooting storage performance problems
Boot from SAN
β’ vSphere support for boot from SAN
β’ Advantages and disadvantages of boot from SAN
β’ Configuring boot from SAN