VMware vSphere 6.0 Part 4 - Clusters, Patching, Performance

• Understand ESXi host requirements for DRS/HA clusters
• Create and edit Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) load balanced clusters
• Understand and adjust DRS automation level settings
• Understand and apply DRS placement and migration recommendations
• Use Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) to safely grow existing DRS clusters
• Deliver high VM service availability using VMware High Availability clusters
• Understand and configure HA cluster settings such as Admission Control, All Paths Down and Permanent Device Loss policies
• Design HA clusters for continued management and correct behavior using network redundancy and Heartbeat datastore redundancy
• Configure DRS and HA clusters according to VMware's best practices for clusters
• Understand the features and capabilities of vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Configure ESXi hosts for FT network logging
• Enable Fault Tolerance protection on individual VMs
• Understand the purpose and use of VMware Update Manager
• Configure VUM for correct behavior according to your vSphere environment
• Create and update ESXi host patch baselines
• Apply baselines to ESXi hosts or clusters and check for compliance
• Patch and update non-compliant ESXi hosts
• Understand ESXi use of physical CPU resources
• Understand the five ways ESXi uses to efficiently manage memory
• Use Overview and Advanced performance charts to monitor resource use
• Identify and correct common performance issues

VMware vSphere 6.0 is the platform businesses depend on to deploy, manage and run their virtualized Windows and Linux workloads.

In this course you will learn how to effectively manage host CPU/Memory resources with DRS clusters, to minimize VM downtime caused by ESXi host failures with HA clusters, to eliminate unplanned VM downtime with Fault Tolerance, to patch and update ESXi hosts with VUM and how to maximize ESXi host and VM performance.

Learn DRS & HA Clusters, Fault Tolerance, VMware Update Manager and Performance

This course covers five major topics that all vSphere 6 vCenter administrators must know:

• We start with a thorough presentation of VMware Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) clusters. DRS clusters dynamically balance VM CPU and memory demands by automatically VMotion migrating VMs experiencing CPU/Memory resource stress. We also look at Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) - a feature that lets you safely mix newer and older ESXi hosts in a DRS cluster
• Next, we will learn how to minimize VM downtime due to unplanned ESXi host failures by implementing High Availability clusters (HA). HA clusters monitor ESXi host health, detect ESXi host failures and re-assign VM ownership from failed ESXi hosts to healthy ESXi host peers. We will also learn about key HA policies like All Paths Down and Permanent Device Loss handling - new to vSphere 6
• We move on to look at how to completely eliminate unplanned VM downtime (even if an ESXi host fails) through VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). FT hot replicates a running VM to a peer ESXi host. If the ESXi host running the primary copy of a FT protected VM fails, FT automatically places the replicated copy into service. We'll see how to configure, run and test FT protected VMs.
• Next we will see how to use VMware Update Manager to safely and efficiently patch and update ESXi hosts. We will learn about Patch Baselines (patch sets), how to attach Baselines to an ESXi host or cluster, how to check for patch compliance (all needed patches present on a host) and how to patch ESXi hosts.
• Finally, we will take a close look at ESXi host and VM performance. We will see what the VMkernel does to efficiently utilize physical CPU and how we can right size vCPU in VMs. We will see the five memory management techniques used by the VMkernel to efficiently manage memory and how to turn on Transparent Page Sharing to maximize memory use. We will see how to configure Storage I/O Control and how to identify and fix host and VM performance bottlenecks.

The skills you will acquire in this course will help make you a more effective vSphere 6 administrator.

Added Bonus! This course is 100% downloadable. Take it with you and learn on your schedule.