VMware Certified

Associate Data Center

Virtualization
Fundamentals
This course provides a fundamental understanding of the VMwares data center
virtualization products.
The course is about:
Components and features of Vsphere 6.0
Shows how Vsphere 6.0 product line helps resolve businesses, IT technical
challenges commonly faced by organizations with regard to DC virtualization.
Identify the need for DC virtualization
Objectives:
Identify the need for DC virtualization
Describe the Virtual Machine capabilities
Outline the capabilities of the Vsphere 6.0
VMware has been radically transforming IT that makes business
Agile
Efficient
Profitable
With virtualization and policy driven automation, we simplify IT complexity across
the entire DC
VMwares vision is to
Automate quality of Service
Have independent choices
Aim to reduce CAPEX and OPEX by 50%
Remain independent of Hardware, OS and Application stack and service providers
Assist organizations move beyond IT as a cost center, to move towards IT as a
service business centric model
Improve operational efficiency. This new approach creates an improved model for IT
architecture at each critical layer, Infrastructure, end users and application status
Virtualization is the process of creating virtual versions of physical components such
as server, storage and network devices
Virtualization reduces
1. IT expenses
2. Boosts efficiency
3. Agility, for not just large enterprises, but for small and mid-size enterprises.

Virtualization enables multiple OS and applications to be run on a single server and

consolidates HW, and increase productivity from fewer servers. Virtualization
platforms are:
1. Server Virtualization
Multiple OSs can run on a single physical server as virtual machines,
each with access to the underlying servers computing resources.
Each of the VMs runs individually unaware of the other VMs that exist
in the same host. So if one VM crash the others are not impacted
2. Network Virtualization
It is a complete reproduction of a complete physical network as
software.
3. Storage Virtualization
Provides an abstraction layer for physical storage resources to be
managed and optimized in a virtualization environment
4. Application Virtualization
Application virtualization increases mobility of applications to any
server in the environment, with minimal downtime, by decoupling the
application and the operating system from the server HW.
5. Desktop Virtualization
Virtualized desktops and applications help reduce costs and increase
service , to deliver applications and desktops to offshore employees
and in a remote management model, on IPad and android tablets,
again helps reduce cost and increase service
Virtualization is the foundation of cloud computing. It powers cloud computing and
helps deliver on its potential, by
i.
Virtualizing
ii.
Consolidating
iii.
Automating, the data center resources and management. The
infrastructure can then be transformed into a flexible cloud
infrastructure.
VRealize suite is purpose built for heterogeneous data centers and hybrid cloud,
which automates the delivery of Infrastructure and application, across multiple
hypervisors, public and private cloud, with both speed and control
Vsphere provides a robust API that simplifies the robust virtualization platform for
management and integrates with Openstack APIs that enables developers to
deploy, manage and run Openstack infrastructure.
BDE, or Big Data extensions delivers a new level of efficiency and agility in handling
data workloads:
1. Support, next generation applications such as Hadoop.
2. Help run Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments

Data Center Virtualization

The conversion of Hardware devices in a datacenter into software resources.

In general the servers, network and storage devices in the DC, are expensive, consume
a lot of space, power and generate heat
Hardware failures are a threat and routine maintenance tasks are time consuming.
Through the virtualization platform, you can consolidate the DC into fewer pieces

Of hardware and easily manage them through the virtualized management platforms.
In a virtualized environment, each of the servers, operating systems, applications are
separated from the underlying hardware and placed on a hypervisor, which provides
each VM, access to the underlying resources, which enables multiple virtual machines
to access the same HW.
The main challenge faced by the IT departments is that the Infrastructure sprawl, that
compels, IT departments t channel their budget and also 70% of which goes into their
maintenance.
Virtualization software solves the problem allowing to run multiple operating systems
and applications on a single host and each self-contained virtual machine is isolated
from the others.
The benefits of DC virtualization are:
Reduce capital and operating cost: Server consolidation enables, you
to get more out of your existing HW, by running multiple VMs on a single
physical server. Fewer servers, means lower capital and operating costs.
The server with the highest virtual machine density provides the
maximum savings per host
Deliver High application availability: Availability and Fault tolerance
features are an integral part of the DCV tools and help protect your
virtualization environment. With this feature, if a node or server fails, all
the VMs are automatically restarted or continued onto another machine,
with no downtime or data loss
Improve business continuity: Virtualization makes it simpler to survive
potential disasters. VMs can be moved from one machine to another even
in a different location without a data loss.

Increase Productivity: Streamlined and automated management tasks,

allows you to spend less time on maintenance and more time on
innovation
Improve responsiveness: With virtualization, desktops, applications and
servers can scale quickly
The heart of virtualization is the VM, a tightly isolated software container, with its own
virtual HW, its own OS and one or more apps.
A collection of virtualized hardware resources that constitute a physical computer on a
native environment
VMs share the resources of the physical server on to which they are mounted.
Allows quickly adding, upgrading or replacing components without rebooting the VM,
such as NICs and Processor.
Allows installing OSs and apps as you would on a physical server.
The CPU, memory, Network and storage resources are not directly accessed through
the VM, but, through the hypervisor.
Many VMs can run simultaneously on a single host.
The hypervisor decouples the VMs from the physical host and allocates computing
resources.

VM Capabilities and benefits:

VMs can be used to host any application, such as file, DBs, Email and highperformance applications. Orgs consider the VMs as a means to increase their
availability
VMs are easy to move copy and restore, which makes DR simple.
Some orgs also look to virtualization for commissioning new servers quickly, since VMs
can be deployed in minutes.
Patch management has been made easier in virtualization and when snapshots are
taken of the VMs, state. If after applying a patch any issues are faced, the system can
be restored back to its previous state using the snapshots
Baremetal Backups: This allows a complete Image based backup of the running
physical machine. This also helps to restore an entire server, without having to repair an
OS. Individual files can also be restored.
VMs allow to hot-add hardware, without restarting the machine. However to decrease
resources the VMs needs to be powered off.
Benefits of the VMs are:
1. Many OSs and apps can be hosted out of a single physical HW, the same time.
2. Every physical machine is used to its full capacity, allowing you to significantly
reduce costs by deploying fewer servers overall
3. VMs can be moved across VM hosts while running, via a process called Live
Migration or VMotion
4. The business critical applications can be virtualized to reduce costs and improve
performance, reliability and scalability
ESXi Hypervisor:
The hypervisor
1. Provides the virtual HW and physical resources on which you can create virtual
machines

2. It is managed by the Vcenter server and is installed on the server

Types of Hypervisor
1. Baremetal
A. Installed on the physical device without any OS.
B. They perform the functions of the OS and have resource management
capabilities
C. DCV is typically performed using Baremetal HV
D. Since the dependency on a OS is low, there is also a lesser overhead and they
perform both roles

2. Hosted
A. Hosted hypervisors operate on top of the pre-existing OS.
B. This method is helpful, when the underlying HW, does not support the Baremetal
OS model
C. Workstation is an example of the hosted HV

The Vsphere ESXi is a Baremetal hypervisor that performs the resource management
while directly accessing the underlying physical HW.
Improves resource efficiency, because of the low operating overhead
The performance of the hypervisor is not dependent of another OS.
The ESXi, hosts VMs and provides management functions to help deploy and control
them
Also,
a. Create new virtual machines
b. Adjust configuration
c. Monitor performance
d. Control the OS
ESXi is commonly installed on the HDD of the server, but can also be installed on:

a.
b.
c.
d.

Flash drives
SD cards
USB drives
Network boot using traditional boot, such as PXE (Protocol Execution Environment)
or Trivial File Transfer Protocol or TFTP

VMWARE Vsphere 6.0

Empowers users to scale up and scale out apps
Simplify scalability and redefine DC.
Result is highly resilient, on-demand infrastructure
Drives down DC costs, increases app and system uptime and simplifies the way the IT
runs the DC
Purpose built for next generation apps
Core foundational building block for Software defined Data Center

Accelerates the shift to cloud computing

Delivers enhanced scale, performance and availability
Simplifies VDC, mgmt.
Provides the capability to perform live work load migrations
Provides capability to perform data center maintenance with zero downtime
Allows you to transform storage for VM by enabling external storage arrays, to operate
in a more VM-centric manner
Enables you to build and operate cloud environments
Comes in 3 offerings
1. Standard
2. Enterprise
3. Enterprise+
Benefits of VSphere 6.0
1. Improves efficiency through utilization and automation
2. Maximizes uptime across your cloud infrastructure.
3. Reduces unplanned downtime and planned downtime for storage and maintenance
4. Lower IT costs, CAPEX by 70% and OPEX by 30%

5. Provides agility and control without compromising security

6. Provides a common standard based platform that provides support to standard IT
versus next generation IT services.
7. Enhance integration with Open APIs.
8. Helps organizations challenges related to Availability, scalability, Optimization,
Application upgrade, management and cloud challenges

Vsphere 6.0
Vsphere Component Layers:
1. Vcenter Server
a. Provides a single point of control for Vsphere data center
b. Provides essential data center services such as
i. Access control
ii. Performance Monitoring
iii. Configuration
2. Infrastructure services
a. Abstract, aggregate and allocate resources
b. Categorize into compute, storage and network
3. Application services
a. These services ensures availability, security, and scalability of applications
b. Examples are High Availability and VMotion
4. Clients
a. Allows users to communicate with Vsphere data center
Vsphere Architecture:

 Core of the SDDC.

Vsphere clusters can now support
o Up to 64 hosts
o 8000 VMs
o Each VM can have up to 128 vCPUs
o 4 TB RAM
Supported Storage
o FC SAN
o iSCSI
o NAS
o SPBM Storage Policy Based Management allows common
management across storage tiers and dynamic storage classes of
automation
Networking
o Vsphere 6.0 supports network I/O control and multicast snooping
o Allows dedicated networking stack
o Simplifies IP address management with dedicated default gateway for
VMotion traffic
Availability
o Allows non-disruptive live migration of workloads across distributed
switches and Vcenter servers and provide savings of up to 95% of uptime
and resources

o There is also expanded support for software-based fault tolerance for

workloads with up to 4 vCPUs
Management
o Vsphere 6.0 provides several interfaces such as
Vsphere content library
Vsphere web client SDDC management and VM access
VRealize automation to accelerate the deployment and
management of application and compute resources, improving
business agility and operational efficiency
VRealize operations that delivers intelligent operations and
management across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures
Vsphere Configuration Maximum
o Each Vsphere 6.0 instance can support per host
480 CPUs
12TB RAM
2048 VMs
Vcenter Server
o Provides centralized management of the VSphere virtual infrastructure
o Allows administrators to ensure security and availability
o Simplifies day-to-day tasks
o Reduces complexity
o Can manage the ESXi hosts using Vsphere web client
o Simplified management of VM hosts
o Automation by assembling or automating the workflows in Vcenter
orchestrator
o Can restart the VMs without any manual intervention
o Monitors utilization across resource pools and allocates resources among
VMs
o Integrates with ecosystem partners to extend capabilities of the virtual
infrastructure
o VMware Platform services controller:
Is a component of the Vcenter server
Single point to manage all Vsphere roles and permissions along
with licensing
PSC has 2 models of deployment
Embedded: In this model the PSC and Vcenter server are
installed on a single virtual machine
Centralized: In this model the PSC and Vcenter server are
installed on different VMs.
Contains Vcenter common services such as
Single sign-on
VMware certificate authority
Licensing

 Server Reservation and registration

Vcenter Server features:
o Certificate Management:
Solution-users created when a solution such as
Vcenter server
Vcenter inventory service
are registered with Vcenter SSO, are utilized as certificate endpoints
These users are issues certificates instead of individual services
This enables the services associated with the solution user to
utilize the same certificate, substantially reducing the number of
certificates required to manage the environment
The VMCA (VMware Certificate Authority) that issues signed
certificates to all Vsphere 6.0 components via the solution users.
o Alarms and Alerts
Alarms are notifications that are activated
In response to an event
A state or condition
State of an inventory object
Alarms can change from mild warnings to more serious system
alerts as system conditions change, and can trigger automated
alarm actions
This functionality is useful, when you want to be informed or take
immediate action, when certain events or conditions occur for a
specific inventory object or group of objects.
o Monitoring features
Vcenter server provides several tools to help monitor the
environment and locate the source of current and potential
problems.
It provides performance charts, storage reports, and system log
files to monitor your environment
o Template Management
The content library simplifies virtual machine template
management and distribution by centrally managing the virtual
machine templates, ISO images and scripts
It also performs the replication of associated data from the
published catalog to the subscribed catalog at other sites.
As the content is updated, old versions are automatically purged
and replaced with a new version, offering life cycle management
capabilities for virtual machine templates and related files
o Linked Mode deployment
Vcenter server linked mode enables common inventory view
across multiple instances of the Vcenter server.

Linked mode provides a single pane of glass view across

geographically separate Vcenter servers.
This deployment replicates licenses, permissions and roles across
multiple Vcenter servers
The linked mode is automatically deployed for any Vcenter
deployment
Shared Storage and Protocols
o Shared storage consists of the storage systems that your ESXi host uses
to store virtual machine files remotely
o The host accesses these systems over a High speed storage network
o Shared storage helps in operating machines on different hosts
o Allows multiple ESXi hosts to be accessible, even if one or more hosts
become unavailable