Virtualization Certified Professional (VEP)

Course number: CGIVCP40

Overview:
Learn how to successfully adopt virtualization techniques into your business and pass the Virtualization Essentials Professional exam.
In this course, you will address the business perspective, technical organization, operation, and governance of virtualization. You will cover concepts that will help you successfully complete the associated exam to become a Virtualization Essentials Professional (VEP). This course complements the Cloud Essentials course, which can be completed before or after you’ve taken this course. The course materials are accredited by the Cloud Credential Council and registered with the Project Management Institute for PDU eligibility. The web-based certification exam will be offered on the last day of class.

What You’ll Learn

Common terms and definitions of virtualization
Business benefits and business considerations of virtualization
Approaches to server virtualization, its relevance to the modern data center, available platforms, and important features
Implications of virtualization on storage, networks, and applications
Issues, challenges, and opportunities
Implications of virtualization on the modern workplace and the challenges and opportunities for managing this
Impact and changes of virtualization on IT service management
Steps that lead to the successful adoption of virtualization techniques and the implications for an organization.
Compliance, risk, and regulatory consequences of virtualization and its financial and strategic impact

Prerequisites

It is strongly recommended you first possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the following:

Explain the significant benefits of virtualization
Install ESXi Server following best practices
Configure and manage local storage
Create virtual and virtual-to-physical LAN segments
Use shared SAN storage, including Fibre SAN and iSCSI SAN
Define and use file share (NAS) datastores
Install, configure, and update the platform service controller and vCenter Server Appliance
Configure and use hotplug hardware, including hot-add vCPUs and memory
Add and grow virtual disks, including system disks and secondary volumes

Target Audience

IT management, support staff, and consultants
Business managers and analysts
Small and midsized business owners
Specialists (IT, security, infrastructure, services, systems, and test)
Business process owners
IT developers
Service providers
System integrators
Architects

Exam

Number of Items: 80

Passing Score: 56 out of 80 (70%)

Duration: 120 minutes (Note: Published exam times include the 5 minutes you are allotted for reading and signing the Candidate Agreement and the 5 minutes you are allotted for the Pearson VUE testing system tutorial.)

Exam Options: In person at Pearson VUE test centers

Course Content

Domain 1.0 Virtualization and vSphere 6.5 with ESXi and vCenter

Objective 1.1 Identify basic virtualization concepts and terms.

Common virtualization uses
- Rackspace economy
- Power/cost reduction
- Lower datacenter overhead/management
- Rapid deployment/imaging
Common virtualization terms
- CPU/vCPU
- RAM/vRAM
- Disk/vDisk
- Network
- VM
- Hosts/clients
- Virtual/physical
- Overcommit
IT problems and virtualization solutions
- Imaging individual machines
- Mass software installation
- Production and test environment mismatches
- Short lifespan of physical servers

Objective 1.2 Identify the features and uses of vSphere 6.5.

CPU and memory management
- Memory overcommit
- Memory sharing
Availability management
- HA clusters
- FT VMs
- vMotion
- Load balancing
- DRS clusters
Storage management
- Storage vMotion
- Storage profiles
Backup and protection
- VMware data protection
- vSphere replication
- vSphere endpoint

Objective 1.3 Install ESXi.

Installation process
- EULA
- Target disks
- Root passwords
- Local storage partitioning and formatting
  - Enterprise class storage controllers
- Post-installation
  - ESXi DCUI
    - NIC selection
    - Static IP
    - Host/domain names
    - Management network configuration
    - IPv4/IPv6 configuration
Host logs
Config files
vSphere Client support
- Inventory
- Roles
- System logs
ESXi Host Client
- User management
- Active Directory joining
- Time configuration
- DNS and router settings
- Physical server properties
- Physical network adapters
- Health status
- ESXi firewall
- ESXi system logs
- Resource sizing

Domain 2.0 Networking and Storage

Objective 2.1 Identify common virtual network hardware components and concepts.

Virtual switches
- Internal only/isolated
- Uplinked
- Teamed
vSwitch properties
- Virtual side
- Physical side
vSwitch rules
Frame forwarding
Multi-homed networking
Virtual NICs
- Emulated
- Fully virtualized

Objective 2.2 Work with virtual switches.

vSphere standard virtual switches
vSphere distributed virtual switches
Frame forwarding
vSwitch connection types
- VMkernel ports
- VM port groups
vSwitch rules
VMkernel NICs
pNIC teams
Cisco Discovery Protocol

Objective 2.3 Work with shared storage.

Networking categories
- Physical
- Virtual-to-physical
- VM-to-VM
- VMkernel networking
NAS
- SMB
- NFS protocol
  - Server side vs. client side
  - Pros and cons of NFS shares
  - FQDN/IP
Linux NFS shares
- /dir
- IP
- Rw
- Sych
- No_root squash
Defining
- Drive types
- Capacity
- Provisioning
Mounting/unmounting
Troubleshooting
- VMware support
- Correct addressing
- Services enabled
- Firewall configuration
- Connectivity
NFS best practices
- Jumbo frames
- Read-only mounting
SAN
- Storage capacity consolidation
- Redundant pathways
- Shadowing
- Snapshotting
Fibre SANs
- Fibre switched fabric topology
- WWNs
  - Zoning
  - Masking
- Zoning options
  - Port zoning
  - WWN zoning
  - Hard and soft zoning
- Runtime hardware paths
iSCSI
- Non-redundant storage networks
- Redundant Layer 2 networks
- Stacked storage networks
- Routed storage networks
- iSCSI qualified names
- Hardware/software initiators
- IQN
- CHAP
  - 1-way
  - 2-way
LUN
- LUN discovery options
  - Static
  - Send targets
  - Thin LUN provisioning
  - Deduplication
- Hardware addresses
Storage performance and management
- Fast Ethernet networking
- Isolated LAN segments
- pNIC bonding
Replication and backups
- Disaster recovery

Objective 2.4 Work with VMware’s Cluster File System.

VMFS
- Creation
- Growth
- Spanning
VMFS auto discovery
The Add Storage wizard
- Device selection
- VMFS versions
- Partition configuration
- Datastore settings
Storage paths
- Healthy
- Failed
- Preferred
- Active
- Standby
PSP
- Round Robin
- Fixed
- Most Recently Used
Capacity management

Domain 3.0 VM Creation and Management

Objective 3.1 Identify common virtual machine hardware components.

VM hardware
- Virtual keyboard
- Keyboard/mouse controllers
- Floppy controllers
- IDE controllers
- SATA controllers
- PCI video controllers
- CPUs
- Virtual Ethernet NICs
- USB devices
Base VMs

Objective 3.2 Create and configure virtual machines.

The New virtual machine wizard
- vCPU sockets and cores
- RAM
- Disk
  - SCSI
  - SATA
- Removable media devices
VMX files
Guest OS installation
- ISO images vs. physical media
- Supported OSs
  - Windows versions
  - Linux distributions
  - Other supported OSs
    - Mac OSX 6+
    - Solaris 10 and 11
    - FreeBSD Unix
    - SCO OpenServer 5, UnixWare 7
Virtual hardware upgrades

Objective 3.3 Install VMware tools.

Device manager
- Guest OS driver enhancements
- Additional drivers
  - Heartbeat
  - File system synchronization
  - Guest OS busy/idle indicator
  - Memory management
- USB passthrough to physical devices
VM snapshots
Snapshot Manager
- Commit
- Revert
- Fork

Objective 3.4 Import and configure vCenter Server.

vCenter Server
- vCenter for Windows
  - Windows vServer Installer App
- vCenter for databases
  - Microsoft
  - Oracle
  - vPostgres
- Database storage requirements
Performance data
vCenter Server Appliance
PSC
VAMI
vCenter Task Scheduler
VMware Remote Console
SSO Service
VMCA
- VMCA default
- VMCE enterprise
- Custom
vSphere Web Client
- HTML5 version
ESXi target host selection
- Password selection
- Deployment size
- Storage requirements
- Target datastores
- Time synchronization

Objective 3.5 Create an inventory hierarchy.

Datacenters
- Datacenter folders

Objective 3.6 Install and operate the VMware Remote Console Application.

VM property editing
Power management
BIOS interaction
- Phoenix BIOS

Objective 3.7 Deploy multiple VMs simultaneously.

Image creation
- Templates
  - Properties
- Guest OS customization
- Host/cluster/resource pool assignment
- Virtual disk formats
  - Thick provisioned
    - Lazy zeroed
    - Eager zeroed
  - Thin provisioned
Deploying from templates
- Deploy Template wizard
Cloning

Objective 3.8 Work with and manage virtual appliances.

Pre-built VMs
Types (based on need)
- Security
  - Firewall
  - Antivirus/anti-spam
  - IDS/IPS
  - Unified threat management
- Applications
  - Mail servers
  - Web servers
- OSs
Virtual appliance pros and cons
vCPU considerations
Hotplugging
- vCPU hotplugging
- Memory hotplugging
- Virtual disk
2D/3D video support
Importation
- OVF
- OVA

Objective 3.9 Define permission models.

Roles
- Existing roles
  - Administrator
  - VM User
  - VM Power User
  - Network Administrator
- Custom roles
- Role assignment
Privileges
Permissions
- Item-level
- vCenter base permissions
- Default ESXi permissions
Permission best practices
Groups
- ESX Admins group

Objective 3.10 Monitor virtual infrastructure with vCenter alarms.

Alarms
- Parameters
- Actions
- Definition and customization
Active and object alarms
Alarm best practices
Alarm targets

Objective 3.11 Perform migration tasks.

VM migration
- Cold
- Hot
  - vMotion migration
  - vMotion migration requirements
  - Long Distance migration
- Storage
  - Storage vMotion
Validation and warnings
Host compatibility
AMD CPU Identification Utility
Intel CPU Identification Utility

Domain 4.0 Resource Management

Objective 4.1 Allocate resource pools.

Resource pools vs. individual VMs
- Auto-update
- Resource allocation
- Resource use monitoring
Resource delegation
- Fair
- Predictable
Resource tuneables
- Limits
- Reservations
- Shares
Resource pool settings
- Share settings
  - High
  - Normal
  - Low
- Hard limits
  - Total ESXi host MHz
  - Total ESXi host MBs
- Expandable reservations
Dynamic memory management

Objective 4.2 Work with DRS clusters.

DRS clusters
- Cluster maximums
- Predictive DRS
- Network-aware DRS
DRS functions
- ESXi host placement
- ESXi host dynamic balancing
DRS operation modes
- Manal
- Partially automated
- Fully automated
  - Migration threshold
DRS profiles
- VM distribution
- Memory metric for load balancing
- CPU overcommit
Affinity/anti-affinity rules
Overrides
EVC
- AMD Opteron pCPUs
- Intel Xeon pCPUs
- EVC requirements
- EVC validation/validation failures
- Server generation considerations
DRS resource management
Server capacity management

Domain 5.0 Monitoring and Maintenance

Objective 5.1 Monitor virtual infrastructure with vCenter alarms.

Alarms
- Triggers
  - VM triggers
  - ESXi host triggers
  - Datastore triggers
  - vCenter triggers
- Default definitions
Actions
Custom alarms
Alarm status
- Green
- Yellow
- Red
Mail server properties
SNMP receiver properties

Objective 5.2 Work with VMware Update Manager.

VUM
- VUM Size Estimator
- VUM configuration
- VUM vSphere Client plug-in
- Network connectivity/ports
- Settings
  - Maintenance Mode
  - Cluster
Baseline types
- Host patch
  - Fixed
  - Dynamic
- Host extension
- Host upgrade
- VA upgrade
Baseline attachment
Patch application
Compliance scanning
VUM tasks
- Software patch definition downloading
- Patch update downloading
- Update scanning
VUM and HA admission control
Host remediation options
Cluster remediation options

Objective 5.3 Analyze and tune performance.

Common performance issues
- Scalability
- Efficient resource utilization
CPU scheduling and prioritization
- Sockets
- Cores
- Hyper-threaded logical processors
- Running vs. idle VMs
- Sequential and concurrent tasks
- Safe pCPU overcommit
RAM allocation management
- VM memory overcommit
- TPS
  - Security issues
  - Inter-VM TPS
- Memory ballooning
- Memory compression
- VMkernel swapping
CPU and memory best practices
Storage I/O controls
ESXi and SSDs
Performance charts and advanced performance charts
Performance analysis tools
- Windows Resource Monitor
- Task Manager
- Turbonomic
- Foglight
vCenter Operations Manager

Domain 6.0 Replication and High Availability

Objective 6.1 Enable and configure

HA clusters
HA requirements
ESXi host failure
- HA host failure alarms
ESXi management network isolation
- Isolation response policy settings
  - NIC teaming vSwitch0
  - Second management port
Network/datastore heartbeats
- PDL
- APD
  - Datastore APD
- HA enablement and configuration
  - Failures and responses
  - Restart priorities
    - Host failure and VM restart
    - HA restart
  - VM dependency restart condition
    - Resources allocated
    - Powered on
    - Guest heartbeats detected
    - App heartbeats detected
  - Restart condition timers
    - Additional delay
    - VM dependency restart condition timeout
  - Host isolation response
    - Epic VM failure
  - Datastore permanent device loss
  - VM monitoring sensitivity
- Proactive HA
- Admission control
  - Percent
  - Slot
  - Failover
- Per-VM override
- Maintenance Mode

Objective 6.2 Prepare for vSphere replication.

Replication targets
- Local
- Remote
- Target datastores
VM synchronization
VM replication policies
- RPO
- Hot replication policy
- Recovery snapshots
Replicated VMs
VR Appliance
- Console
- Web login
VM replication configuration
- Replicated disk properties
- Quiesces
- RPO
- Point in time instances
Site-to-site replication
Replication time zones
Replication servers

Objective 6.3 Replicate and recover VMs.

Replication
- Replication status
- Replication monitoring
  - Outgoing replications
  - Incoming replications
- Manual replication
Power off and recovery
- Recovery options
  - With recent changes
  - With available data
- Recovered VM connection and testing

Available Formats

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