This powerful 5-day class is an intense introduction to virtualization using VMware’s vSphere™ 5.0 including VMware ESX™ 5.0 and vCenter™.  This class starts with the basics and rapidly progresses to more advanced topics. More than 40% of class time is devoted to labs so concepts, skills and best practices are developed and reinforced.

Initial labs focus on installation and configuration of stand-alone ESXi servers. As the class progresses, shared storage, networking and centralized management are introduced. The class continues on to more advanced topics including resource balancing, high availability, back-up and recovery, troubleshooting and more. Disaster recovery, rapid deployment, hot migration and workload consolidation are also covered. This class is unique in its approach; which is to identify common IT pain points and then clearly explain and demonstrate how virtualization delivers clear, tangible benefits (e.g.: reduced costs, greater consistency, responsiveness, reduced administration, server consolidation, etc.). Each topic is presented from the perspective of delivering key business value; not just the technical or mechanical aspects of the software.

Audience: System Architects, security specialists, analysts, back-up and storage administrators.

Prerequisites: Attendees should have user, operator or administrator experience on common operating systems such as Microsoft Windows®, Linux™, UNIX™, etc. Experience installing, configuring and managing operating systems, storage systems and or networks is useful but not required. All attendees should have a basic familiarity with PC server hardware, disk partitioning, IP addressing, O/S installation, networking, etc.

Class Length: 5 days