VMware Training

Wed Feb 19 18:36:41 UTC 2014

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 8:14 PM, Phil Gardner <phil.gardnerjr at gmail.com>wrote:

> Not sure if this list is the best place, but it is probably the only list
> that I'm on that won't give me a bunch of grief about the chosen technology.
>
> I looked at VMware's site, and there are a ton of options. I'm wondering
> if anyone has some basic suggestions or experiences.
>
> I'm a Linux admin by trade (RH based), with "ok" networking ability. I'm
> sufficiently versed in deploying scripted ESXi (including 5.x)
> installations for a specific environment, including vswitches/SAN config
> (but only with NFS datastores backed by a NetApp, unfortunately, no
> blockbased stores).
>

If you want block storage, just export an iSCSI device to the ESXi machines
(tgtadm on RedHat is all you need and a few gigs of free space). VMFS is
cluster aware so you can export the same volume to independent ESXi hosts
and as long you don't access the same files, you're good to go.

>
> I'd like to get experience deploying VCenter clusters, down to DRS/HA
> config, other block based storage, and anything else a large environment
> needs.
>
>
All you need is licenses (Enterprise Plus to get all the nice features) and
a vCenter server. If you already have it, just create a new cluster and
follow the prompts in the wizards and play with all the options.

> Thoughts or experiences?
>
>
When I first started with this it seemed like rocket science, but once you
create a cluster and do DRS/HA/dvSwitch/etc it's all pretty basic:
- HA in VMware means that if a host fails, the VMs will be restarted on a
different host.
- DRS it means automated live migration of virtual machines based on load.
- dvSwitch is a distributed virtual switch whereby you have a consistent
configuration across the hosts that you configure from the vCenter server.

If you know RedHat, than from experience in a few days you can learn the
ins/outs of how a VMware cluster works.

With ESXi 5.1+ you can run ESXi inside an ESXi host so if you have a lot of
memory on a host you can create your own little lab with all the features
and experiment with them.

If you want to certify, than official training is a mandatory requirement.

HTH,
Eugeniu