VMware vSphere Essentials

Book description

Efficiently virtualize your IT infrastructure with vSphere

In Detail

This book will provide you with the skills you'll need to plan, deploy, and manage VMware vSphere infrastructures. Starting with an introduction to vCenter Server and managing single and multiple ESXi servers, you'll learn the basics of vSphere's architecture of virtualization, hypervisors, and virtual infrastructure, and discover how to create and manage virtual machines. You'll learn network management using inbuilt vSphere operations and network virtualization using VMware NSX technology, along with virtual storage in a vSphere environment. You'll go on to implement and configure VSAN with vSphere and discover the advanced operations that can be performed with virtual machines. By the end of this book, you will have explored critical components in vSphere-HA, FT, and DRS security of vSphere architecture, and some vSphere 6.0 new features.

What You Will Learn

  • Explore a multiple-host virtualization environment with ESXi and vCenter Server
  • Create and manage virtual machines
  • Create and configure vNetwork Switches to manage your virtual networks
  • Build software-defined, performance-oriented shared storage and network topologies with VSAN and NSX
  • Discover features such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, templates, and cloning
  • Familiarize yourself with vSphere High Availability, Fault Tolerance, DRS, and Update management
  • Discover some of the newly added vSphere 6.0 features

Table of contents

  1. VMware vSphere Essentials
    1. Table of Contents
    2. VMware vSphere Essentials
    3. Credits
    4. Foreword
    5. About the Authors
    6. About the Reviewers
    7. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
    8. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the color images of this book
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    9. 1. Introduction to VMware vSphere
      1. Need and use of VMware vSphere
      2. Differences between VMware vSphere and other hypervisors
      3. Understanding ESXi and modes of management
        1. History of ESXi
        2. Understanding ESXi
        3. Managing ESXi
        4. vSphere Client
        5. vSphere Web Client
        6. Virtual hardware versions
          1. vSphere editions and kits
      4. Different types of vSphere installations
        1. Fresh installation
        2. Auto Deploy
        3. Upgrading an ESXi host
      5. Introduction to virtual infrastructure – virtual machines, disks, CPUs, memory, switches, network, and storage
        1. Virtual machines
        2. CPU virtualization
        3. Memory virtualization
        4. Physical and virtual networking
        5. Physical and virtual storage
      6. Summary
    10. 2. VMware vCenter Server
      1. Introduction to vCenter Server
      2. vCenter Server architecture
      3. Communication between vCenter Server and ESXi hosts
      4. Additional vCenter Server components
      5. Comparison of vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance
      6. Preparing and installing vCenter Server on Microsoft Windows
        1. Hardware, software, and network requirements
        2. Database preparation
        3. vCenter Server installation
      7. Importing, starting, and configuring the vCenter Server Appliance
        1. vCenter Server Appliance features
        2. vCenter Server Appliance benefits
        3. vCenter Server Appliance requirements
        4. Importing the vCenter Server Appliance
          1. Deploying vCSA 6.0
        5. Starting the vCenter Server Appliance 5.5
          1. Configuring the vCenter Server Appliance time zone
          2. Connecting to the web interface on vSphere 5.x
      8. Configuring and managing vCenter Server
        1. Managing vCenter Server Appliance services
        2. Single Sign-On
          1. Advantages of vCenter Single Sign-On
          2. Characteristics of vCenter Single Sign-On
      9. Managing inventory, hosts, VMs, and templates via vCenter
        1. Data center objects
        2. Organizing the inventory objects
        3. Navigating the vSphere Web Client
        4. Adding the host to vCenter Server
      10. vCenter Server licensing
      11. Backing up vCenter Server
      12. Summary
    11. 3. Creating Virtual Machines
      1. Overview of virtual machines
        1. Virtual machine files
        2. Virtual hardware versions
      2. Creating a virtual machine
        1. Creating a new virtual machine using the wizard
        2. Importing an OVF file
      3. Thick and thin provisioning of virtual disks
      4. Installing a guest operating system
        1. Customizing the guest operating system
          1. VMware Tools
      5. Creating templates and clones
        1. Deploying a virtual machine from a template
        2. Cloning a virtual machine
      6. Summary
    12. 4. Managing Virtual Network
      1. Virtual network
        1. An overview of virtual switches
      2. Basic network operations using vSphere
        1. Assigning an IP address to an ESXi host
        2. Creating vSwitches and virtual ports
          1. Understanding virtual switch and port types
            1. vNetwork Standard Switch
            2. vNetwork Distributed Virtual Switch
            3. Benefits of distributed over standard
          2. Virtual switch ports
          3. Design ideas
            1. Blade server-based approach
            2. Rack server-based approach
            3. Additional ideas for optimizing fault tolerance network designs
          4. Connecting a virtual machine to a port group
      3. An overview of VLANs
        1. Creating VLANs
      4. Network security policies
        1. Security policy
        2. Traffic shaping
        3. NIC teaming
      5. Load Balancing with vSphere
      6. Summary
    13. 5. Network Virtualization with VMware NSX
      1. NSX components
      2. Deploying NSX Manager
        1. Steps for installing NSX Manager
      3. Data center access layer deployment
      4. Logical routing
        1. Distributed routing
        2. Centralized routing
      5. Logical switching
      6. Logical firewalls
        1. Network isolation
        2. Network segmentation
      7. Logical load balancing
      8. Summary
    14. 6. Managing Virtual Storage
      1. Understanding virtual storage, datastores, and file systems
        1. Datastores
          1. VMFS datastores
          2. NFS datastores
      2. Managing and configuring datastores
        1. Creating a VMFS datastore using vSphere Web Client
        2. Creating an NFS datastore in vSphere Web Client
        3. Upgrading a VMFS datastore
        4. Increasing the VMFS datastore's capacity
          1. Increasing the VMFS datastore's size using vSphere Web Client
        5. Unmounting and mounting a VMFS datastore
        6. Removing a VMFS datastore
        7. vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection (VADP)
          1. Data deduplication
      3. vSphere Data Protection Appliance
        1. Available editions
        2. Deploying and configuring VDP
        3. Data backup
          1. Data recovery
      4. Summary
    15. 7. Working with VSAN
      1. An overview of Virtual SAN
        1. Requirements of VSAN
        2. Benefits of using VSAN
        3. VSAN sizing tool
      2. Installing and configuring VSAN
        1. Virtual SAN datastore properties
        2. Virtual machine requirements
          1. Virtual machine storage policies
            1. Enabling and creating virtual machine storage policies
            2. Assigning a virtual machine storage policy during provisioning
          2. Virtual machine compliance
      3. Failure resilience with VSAN
      4. Summary
    16. 8. Managing Virtual Machines
      1. Deploying virtual machines across data centers
      2. Modifying the virtual machine settings
        1. Adding devices to a virtual machine
        2. Increasing the size of a virtual disk
        3. Inflating a thin provisioned disk
      3. Migrating virtual machines
        1. Using VMware vMotion
          1. Virtual machine requirements for vMotion
          2. Host requirements for vMotion
            1. VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
              1. EVC requirements
              2. Configuring EVC
          3. Migrating a virtual machine
        2. Using Storage vMotion
          1. Migrating a virtual machine using Storage vMotion
          2. Guidelines to use Storage vMotion
        3. Using Enhanced vMotion
          1. Host requirements for Enhanced vMotion
          2. Migrating a virtual machine using Enhanced vMotion
      4. Virtual machine snapshots
        1. The process of taking snapshots
        2. Managing snapshots
      5. Summary
    17. 9. Resource Management and Performance Monitoring
      1. Virtual memory management
        1. Virtual machine memory over-commitment
        2. Virtual machine swap files
        3. Memory reclamation techniques
        4. Virtual CPU
        5. CPU load balancing
        6. Hyper-threading
      2. Understanding resource controls and resource pools
        1. Resource controls
        2. Resource pools
      3. Creating a resource pool
      4. Expandable reservation
      5. Implementing shares, limits, and reservations on resource pools
      6. Monitoring resource usage
      7. Alarms and notifications
      8. Summary
    18. 10. Incorporating vSphere High Availability, Fault Tolerance, and DRS
      1. Understanding High Availability
        1. Configuring HA
      2. Fault Tolerance
        1. Functionality
        2. Requirements for FT
        3. Configuring FT
      3. Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
        1. Configuring DRS
        2. DRS Cluster
          1. Managing and optimizing DRS Clusters
            1. Adding a host to the cluster
            2. Adding virtual machines to the cluster
            3. Managing power resources in a cluster
      4. Using HA and DRS together
        1. Storage DRS
      5. Summary
    19. 11. Securing and Updating vSphere
      1. Configuring ESXi firewall
      2. Understanding security profile services and lockdown mode
        1. Lockdown mode
      3. Microsoft Active Directory integration with vSphere
      4. Using vCloud Networking and Security
      5. Access controls and configuring roles and permissions
      6. Getting started with vSphere Update Manager
        1. vSphere Update Manager requirements
        2. Installing vSphere Update Manager
        3. Configuring and using VMware vSphere Update Manager
      7. Maintenance mode
      8. Summary
    20. 12. vSphere 6.0 Overview
      1. Introduction to vSphere 6.0
        1. Scale-up
        2. Scale-out
      2. vCenter Server features
        1. vCenter Server architecture
      3. Virtual desktop infrastructure
      4. NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology
      5. Instant Clone
      6. Long-distance vMotion
      7. Multi-CPU Fault Tolerance (SMP-FT)
      8. Content library
      9. vSphere Web Client
      10. Storage in vSphere 6.0
        1. Virtual Volumes
        2. vSAN All-Flash
      11. vSphere Data Protection
      12. VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO)
      13. vCloud Air Disaster Recovery
      14. Summary
    21. Index

Product information

  • Title: VMware vSphere Essentials
  • Author(s): Kunal Kumar, Christian Stankowic
  • Release date: May 2015
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781784398750