vSphere Advanced Networking Training is a series of 11 Lesson to let you working in advanced with VMware network. This course is a deep dive into vSphere administration and troubleshooting. Virtualization is becoming a norm in most data centers and the evolution of network administration is growing more and more with new technologies. VMware has stepped up and added many new technologies and features to vSphere networking to help meet these new challenges head on. In this course you will learn advanced topics like vSwitch components, port mirroring, load based teaming, vSphere security considerations, and more. It’s recommended that students come into this course with knowledge of virtualization fundamentals and have experience working with vSphere.
Lesson 1: Getting started
• About Your Instructor
• Who Should Watch This Course?
• What We Cover in the Course
Lesson 2: Lab Setup and Recommendations
• An Overview of My Lab
• Lab – Tour of the Lab Environment
• Why Build a Lab?
• Recommendations for Your Lab
Lesson 3: Let’s Talk About vSphere Networking
• Review and Primer
• vSphere vSwitches
• A Word About vSwitches
• Components of a vSwitch Architecture
• Lab – Overview of a vSwitch
• Why All the Different vNICs?
• Tips for Changing vNIC Types
• Lab – Changing vNIC Type
• About Physical NICs (pNICs): Features, Options, and Virtualization
• Pure Performance with VMDirectPath
• Lab – Configuring VMDirectPath
• Your Virtual Switching Options
• Cisco's Nexus 1000v Virtual Switch
• Which vSwitch for You?
Lesson 4: The Ins and Outs of VLANs
• What Exactly Are VLANs?
• VLAN Recommendations
• Who Does the Tagging?
• VLAN Tagging: Physical Switch, Virtual Switch, and Guest OS
• Gotchas When Using VLANs
• Lab – Configuring VLAN Tagging
• Going Even Further with Private VLANs
• Confused Yet? Primary and Secondary VLANs
• Overview of PVLANs
• Lab – Configuring Private VLANs
• vSwitch Security Configuration
• Where Do VM MAC Addresses Come From?
• Lab – vSwitch Security and MAC Address
Lesson 5: Sphere Network Security Considerations
• Security Considerations in Your vNetwork Design
• Firewall Ports
• Configuring the vNetwork for Different Trust Zones
• Deployment Types for Different Trust Zones: Partially Collapsed and Fully Collapsed
• Top 10 Common Mistakes and Recommendations
• Security Considerations with the vSphere vSwitches and vSphere vDS
• Protecting Your Management Communications
• Isolating Management – Sharing NICs and Dedicated NICs
• An Overview of the vShield Suite
• Lab – vShield Tour
• Third-Party Security Tools
Lesson 6: Physically Connecting vSphere Hosts
• What’s the Big Deal?
• Every Environment is Different
• Connectivity Best Practices
• Topology Suggestions
• A Bigger Hammer – 10Gb Ethernet
• Physical Switch Configuration
• Lab – Switch Configuration
• Load Balancing and Teaming
• Network Teaming
• Load Balancing In-Depth: Virtual Port ID, MAC Hash, and IP Hash
• Load Balancing: Load-Based Teaming
• Lab – Load-Based Teaming
Lesson 7: vSphere Distributed Switch – In Depth
• What is the vSphere Distributed Switch?
• Terms and Ideas
• What is Required to Use the vDS?
• Any Downsides to the vDS?
• vDS Design Considerations
• Lab – Creating a New vSphere Distributed Switch
• Configuring the Main vDS
• vDS Uplink Names
• Creating Port-Groups
• Ports and Port Binding
• Port Binding Recommendations
• vDS and Virtual vCenter?
• Traffic Separation with vDS
• vDS Uplink
• Lab – Traffic Separation
• Lab – Upgrading the vDS Version
Lesson 8: Migration to the vDS
• Migrating to the vDS
• Walking Hosts Over
• Words of Warning
• Lab – vDS Migration
Lesson 9: Traffic Shaping and Resource Pools
• The Purpose of Traffic Shaping
• Standard Rate Limiting and Traffic Shaping
• Traffic Shaping Parameters
• vDS Traffic Shaping Options
• vDS Basic Traffic Shaping
• Network I/O Control (NIOC)
• Shares, Limits, and CoS Tags
• Lab – Configure NIOC
• Considerations with Traffic Shaping
• Let's Talk About Jumbo Frames
• Lab – Configure Jumbo Frames
Lesson 10: Troubleshooting Network Connectivity
• Narrowing Down the Problem
• Common Issues: VLAN Tagging, Hashing Types, Jumbo Frames
• Remove Host From vDS
• vCenter of Environment Outage?
• Network Monitoring Using NetFlow
• NetFlow Configuration
• Network Statistics with vCenter
• Network Statistics with esxtop
• Third-Party Tools
• Lab – Network Statistics
• Port Mirroring
• Configuring Port Mirroring
• Lab – Port Mirroring
Lesson 11: Next Steps
• In this lesson, we wrap up the course and go over some next steps and suggestions for continuing your education.
