Course Overview

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 hands-on lab exercises.

Who should attend

Storage and virtual infrastructure consultants, solution architects, and administrators who are responsible for production support and administration of VMware vSAN 8.0.

Product Alignment

• VMware ESXi™ 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server® 8.0
• VMware vSAN 8.0

Course Objectives

• Describe vSAN concepts
• Detail the underlying vSAN architecture and components
• Explain the key features and use cases for vSAN
• Identify requirements and planning considerations for vSAN clusters
• Explain the importance vSAN node hardware compatibility
• Describe the different vSAN deployment options
• Explain how to configure vSAN fault domains
• Detail how to define and create a VM storage policy
• Discuss the impact of vSAN storage policy changes
• Detail vSAN resilience and data availability
• Describe vSAN storage space efficiency
• Explain how vSAN encryption works
• Detail VMware HCI Mesh™ technology and architecture
• Detail vSAN File Service architecture and configuration
• Describe how to setup a stretched and a two-node vSAN cluster
• Describe vSAN maintenance mode and data evacuation options
• Define the steps to shut down a vSAN cluster for maintenance
• Explain how to use proactive tests to check the integrity of a vSAN cluster
• Use VMware Skyline Health™ for monitoring vSAN health
• Use VMware Skyline Health to investigate and help determine failure conditions
• Discuss vSAN troubleshooting best practices
• Describe vSAN Express Storage Architecture™ concepts 

Course Outline

Course Introduction

• Introduction and course logistics
• Course objectives

Introduction to vSAN

• Describe vSAN architecture
• Describe the vSAN software components: CLOM, DOM, LSOM, CMMDS, and RDT
• Identify vSAN objects and components
• Describe the advantages of object-based storage
• Describe the difference between All-Flash and Hybrid vSAN architecture
• Explain the key features and use cases for vSAN
• Discuss the vSAN integration and compatibility with other VMware technologies

Planning a vSAN Cluster

• Identify requirements and planning considerations for vSAN clusters
• Apply vSAN cluster planning and deployment best practices
• Determine and plan for storage consumption by data growth and failure tolerance
• Design vSAN hosts for operational needs
• Identify vSAN networking features and requirements
• Describe ways of controlling traffic in a vSAN environment
• Recognize best practices for vSAN network configurations

Deploying a vSAN Cluster

• Recognize the importance of hardware compatibility
• Ensure the compatibility of driver and firmware versioning
• Use tools to automate driver validation and installation
• Apply host hardware settings for optimum performance
• Use VMware vSphere® Lifecycle ManagerTM to perform upgrades
• Deploy and configure a vSAN Cluster using the Cluster QuickStart wizard
• Manually configure a vSAN Cluster using VMware vSphere® Client™
• Explain and configure vSAN fault domains
• Using VMware vSphere® High Availability with vSAN
• Understand vSAN Cluster maintenance capabilities
• Describe the difference between implicit and explicit fault domains
• Create explicit fault domains

vSAN Storage Policies

• Describe a vSAN object
• Describe how objects are split into components
• Explain the purpose of witness components
• Explain how vSAN stores large objects
• View object and component placement on the vSAN datastore
• Explain how storage policies work with vSAN
• Define and create a virtual machine storage policy
• Apply and modify virtual machine storage policies
• Change virtual machine storage policies dynamically
• Identify virtual machine storage policy compliance status

vSAN Resilience and Data Availability

• Describe and configure the Object Repair Timer advanced option
• Plan disk replacement in a vSAN cluster
• Plan maintenance tasks to avoid vSAN object failures
• Recognize the importance of managing snapshot utilization in a vSAN cluster

Managing vSAN Storage Space Efficiency

• Discuss deduplication and compression techniques
• Understand deduplication and compression overhead
• Discuss compression only mode
• Configure erasure coding
• Configure swap object thin provisioning
• Discuss reclaiming storage space with SCSI UNMAP
• Configure TRIM/UNMAP

vSAN Security Operations

• Identify differences between VM encryption and vSAN encryption
• Perform ongoing operations to maintain data security
• Describe the workflow of data-in transit encryption
• Identify the steps involved in replacing Key Management Server

vSAN HCI Mesh

• Understand the purpose of vSAN HCI Mesh
• Detail vSAN HCI Mesh technology and architecture
• Perform mount and unmount of a remote datastore

vSAN File Service and iSCSI Target Service

• Understand the purpose of vSAN File Services
• Detail vSAN File Services architecture
• Configure vSAN File Shares
• Describe vSAN iSCSI Target Service

vSAN Stretched and Two Node Clusters

• Describe the architecture and uses case for stretched clusters
• Detail the deployment and replacement of a vSAN witness node
• Describe the architecture and uses case for two-node clusters
• Explain storage policies for vSAN stretched cluster

vSAN Cluster Maintenance

• Perform typical vSAN maintenance operations
• Describe vSAN maintenance modes and data evacuation options
• Assess the impact on cluster objects of entering maintenance mode
• Determine the specific data actions required after exiting maintenance mode
• Define the steps to shut down and reboot hosts and vSAN clusters
• Use best practices for boot devices
• Replace vSAN nodes

vSAN Cluster Monitoring

• Describe how the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) enables VMware to improve products and services
• Use VMware Skyline Health for monitoring vSAN cluster health
• Manage alerts, alarms, and notifications related to vSAN in VMware vSphere® Client™
• Create and configure custom alarms to trigger vSAN health issues
• Use IOInsight metrics for monitoring vSAN performance
• Use a vSAN proactive test to detect and diagnose cluster issues

vSAN Troubleshooting

• Use a structured approach to solve configuration and operational problems
• Apply troubleshooting methodology to logically diagnose faults and optimize troubleshooting efficiency
• Use VMware Skyline Health to investigate and help determine failure conditions
• Explain which log files are useful for vSAN troubleshooting

vSAN Express Storage Architecture

• Understand the purpose of vSAN Express Storage Architecture
• Describe the vSAN Express Storage Architecture components
• Identify Storage Policy differences
• Understand compression and encryption operation differences

Storage and virtual infrastructure consultants, solution architects, and administrators who are responsible for production support and administration of VMware vSAN 8.0.

Prerequisites

Equivalent knowledge or completion of the following course is required:

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V7] (VSICM7)

VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization" (VCP-DCV)

Boštjan Križnič, MCT