VMware - Index

Recently I have been working in the world of VMware, as an administrator more of my servers are now being virtualized and I am being requested to get more involved with setting up VMware latest ESXi server. I wanted a site that covers the basics in order for me to gain my VMware accreditation and help me in remembering the vast information that comes with the VMware virtualized world. I will be covering most of the topics including backups, disaster recovery and some of the VMware tools such as P2V, VMotion, DRS, DPM, HA and FT and also covering vCLI.

Please note that my website will only cover the VMware ESXi version 4, althrough many of the sections can be related to the older versions of ESX.

The site has been comprised of reading the following books and real world experience, if you are new to VMware I highly recommend that you should purchase these books as they contain far more information than this web site contains and of course the VMware web site contains all the documentation you will ever need.

Please feel free to email me any constructive criticism you have with the site as any additional VMware knowledge or mistakes that I have made would be most welcomed.

Introduction

	Introduction and History
	Architecture
	Boot process

My Hardware setup

	Introduction
	Networking
	Openfiler setup
	ESXi server setup
	Final Comments

Installation

	ESXi Server installation
	vSphere Client installation
	vCenter installation and overview

Networking

	Introduction
	Standard Networking
	Port Groups
	Configuration and Problems of vSwitches and Port groups
	Service Console Network
	Distributed Networking
	Final Comments

Storage

	Introduction
	Controllers and Local Storage
	SAN Storage (fibre)
	iSCSI storage (using openfiler)
	VMware File System (VMFS)
	Viewing Storage

Virtual Machines

	Introduction
	First VM - Creating a new VM and Administration
	Guest OS installation and VMware Tools
	Snapshotting
	P2V (physical to virtual)
	Rapid VM deployment - templates, cloning and export to OVF

Security

	Introduction
	Roles and Users
	Datastore Access

Resource Monitoring and Management

	Introduction
	vCPU
	Memory
	vClient/vCenter performance charts
	Alarms
	Events and Tasks
	Resource Management
	Resource pools

VMotion, Storage VMotion and Cold Migration

	VMotion
	Storage VMotion
	Cold Migration

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

	Introduction
	Setting up and configuring DRS
	DRS Options
	DRS Faults and History events

Distributed Power Management (DPM)

	Introduction
	Configuring DPM
	Testing DPM
	Configuring DPM for ILO/RAC/IMM/DRAC cards

High Availability (HA)

	Introduction
	Enabling and configuring
	Testing and Monitoring

Fault Tolerance (FT)

	Introduction
	Configuring FT

Backups and Restoring

	Introduction
	vDR
	Consolidated backups (VCB)

Patch Management

	Introduction
	VMware Update Manager (VUM)
	Baselines and BaseLine Groups
	Scanning and Patching
	ESXi Server and cluster Patching (I also cover staging)
	Update Service

Advanced Configuration Tools

	Introduction
	Host Profiles
	vCLI
	PowerCLI

Commandline CheatSheet

Cheatsheet

Links

The official VMware web site

Books

VMware books
VMware vSphere 4 implementation - Mike Laverick	Chapters come in a nice order, very easy to read, overall a very good book if you are new to VMware ESXi server
VMware ESXi - Planning, Implementation and Security - Dave Mishchenko	This compliments the above book , it has some information the other book does not and misses some information, this book uses the commandline more