VMware vSAN: Install Configure Manage [V8]

During this four-day course, you will gain the knowledge, skills, and tools to plan and deploy a VMware vSAN™cluster. You will learn about managing and operating vSAN. This course focuses on building the required skills for common Day-2 vSAN administrator tasks such as vSAN node management, cluster maintenance, security operations, troubleshooting, and advanced vSAN cluster operations. You will learn these skills through the completion of instructor-led activities and handson lab exercises.

Audience

Storage and virtual infrastructure consultants, solution architects, and administrators who are responsible for production, support, and administration of VMware vSAN 8 Update 2.

Prerequisites

Completion of the following course is required:

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage or equivalent knowledge

Objectives

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Describe vSAN concepts
• Discover vSAN architecture
• Explain key features and use cases for vSAN
• Identify requirements and planning considerations for vSAN clusters
• Describe vSAN deployment options
• Explain vSAN configuration of fault domains
• Describe steps to define and create VM storage policies
• Discuss the impact of vSAN storage policy changes
• Discuss vSAN resilience and data availability
• Describe vSAN storage space efficiency
• Explain vSAN encryption
• Discover VMware Cross-Cluster Capacity Sharing technology and architecture
• Discover vSAN File Service architecture and configuration
• Detail vSAN iSCSI target service configuration
• Describe the steps for setting up stretched and two-node vSAN clusters
• Explain the importance of vSAN hardware compatibility
• Describe vSAN maintenance mode and data evacuation options
• Explain the use of proactive tests to check the integrity of a vSAN cluster
• Explain the usage of VMware Skyline Health for monitoring vSAN health
• Understand the vSAN troubleshooting process

Course Modules

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 Introduction to vSAN

• Describe vSAN
• Review different types of vSAN architectures
• Explore vSAN implementation types
• Distinguish different vSAN disk configurations
• Examine vSAN Storage Policies

3 Planning a vSAN Cluster

• Review vSAN requirements
• Understand factors for vSAN storage capacity planning
• Describe vSAN ReadyNode Sizer capabilities

4 Deploying a vSAN Cluster

• Describe vSAN cluster configuration types
• Identify the steps involved in configuring a vSAN cluster
• Validate vSAN cluster configurations
• Explore Auto-Policy Management
• Configure vSAN Reserved Capacity

5 vSAN Storage Policies

• Recognize vSAN Objects and Components
• Explain storage policies integration with vSAN
• Compare different vSAN storage policies
• Explore vSAN ESA snapshots
• Examine Custom-Sized Namespace Objects
• Understand vSAN ESA storage policies
• Understand how the vSAN Storage Policies can be customized
• Review Configuration Changes and Impacts

6 vSAN Resilience and Data Availability

• Identify vSAN component states
• Explore how Fault Domains can protect against potential outages
• Analyze the vSAN response to different types of hardware failures
• Explore the vSAN response to different types of network partitions
• Explain how vSAN repairs objects after a failure

7 Managing vSAN Space Efficiency

• Explain the configuration steps of compression-only in vSAN OSA
• Discuss vSAN OSA’s deduplication compression
• Review vSAN ESA’s compression
• Describe the steps to reclaim storage space with TRIM/UNMAP

8 vSAN Security Operations

• Understand how vSAN protects data on disk with Data-at-Rest Encryption
• Configure vSAN Data-at-Rest Encryption
• Describe the I/O flow from the Guest OS to encrypted data on disk
• Explore the ESXi host boot up process with encrypted disks
• Review the ESXi boot up process when encryption is activated
• Understand how new keys can be generated
• Explore how vSAN protects data in flight with Datain-Transit Encryption

9 vSAN Stretched and Two-Node Clusters

• Identify characteristics of vSAN stretched clusters
• Discuss the vSAN stretched cluster architecture and use cases
• Explain how read and write I/O management works in vSAN stretched clusters
• List networking requirements of vSAN stretched clusters
• Describe the purpose of the vSAN witness host
• Explain the Two-Node vSAN cluster architecture and use cases
• Describe the purpose of the vSAN shared witness appliance

10 vSAN Cross-Cluster Capacity Sharing

• Understand the purpose of Cross-Cluster Capacity Sharing
• Review three Cross-Cluster Capacity Sharing topologies
• Explore remote vSAN Datastore operations

11 vSAN File Service and iSCSI Target Service

• Understand the purpose of vSAN File Service
• Explore how to turn on and configure vSAN File Service
• Create and view a share and create a snapshot for a share
• Explore monitoring and performance of vSAN File Service
• Describe the vSAN iSCSI target service
• Discuss vSAN iSCSI target service networking
• Detail steps to configure the vSAN iSCSI target service

12 vSAN Cluster Maintenance

• Describe vSAN maintenance mode and data evacuation options
• Detail how to assess the vSAN maintenance mode precheck reports
• Define the steps to shut down a vSAN cluster for maintenance
• Describe vSAN cluster scaling
• Detail the removal and replacement of disks and disk groups in a vSAN cluster
• Detail the removal and replacement of a host in a vSAN cluster
• Describe stages in the vSAN upgrade process
• List the best practices to prepare for a vSAN Upgrade

13 vSAN Cluster Monitoring

• Explore the PNOMA framework
• Understand how Skyline Health can identify issues
• Evaluate and perform proactive tests
• Examine the available performance charts
• Explore capacity monitoring and forecasting tools