VMware Infrastructure: Design

Special notes

Success in this course requires certain prerequisite skills. This short online Pre-test helps you determine whether you possess these needed skills.

Course overview

This 4-day hands-on training course explores how to design VMware Infrastructure architectures with a focus on manageability, availability, and scalability. This classroom training consists of 50% lecture and 50% design exercises.

Prerequisites

PRE-TEST: Achievement of a passing score on a short on-line pre-test:  Click  here  to take the web-based , pre-class self-test to help you determine if you have the right background to attend the HG802S VMware Infrastructure Design Course.

Audience

System architects, system administrators, IT managers, and individuals responsible for designing VMware Infrastructure architectures.

Ways to save

Course objectives

At the end of the course, you should understand the principles involved in designing VMware Infrastructure architectures:

• Implementing best practices and evaluating design considerations to meet business needs
• Distributing resources across ESX clusters automatically and ensuring high availability
• Architecting remote and branch offices
• Designing to support Microsoft Active Directory, SQL Server, and Exchange Server

Course outline

Introduction

• Principles in designing VMware Infrastructure architectures

Designing for Manageability

• Designing for lower cost of administration

Designing for Availability

• Fault-tolerant, resilient and highly available architectures

Designing for Scalability

• Design considerations for scalability
• Tradeoffs between scaling up versus scaling out resources

Designing Based on Analytical Tools

• Available analytical tools
• Designing templates based on inventory analysis
• Sizing a virtual infrastructure based on capacity analysis

Design Pattern: Remote and Branch Offices

• Centralized and distributed remote office architectures
• Making remote office information more available

Design Pattern: Microsoft SQL Server

• Designing an architecture to support SQL Server
• Design considerations for OLTP (online transaction processing) versus DSS (decision support systems)
• Deciding between VMFS, RDM, and a hybrid combination

Design Pattern: Microsoft Active Directory

• Designing virtual domain controllers to minimize management while maximizing performance

Design Pattern: Microsoft Exchange Server

• Designing an architecture to support Exchange Server, including Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 server roles